Senator Questions How Head Attorney Kept His Job While GM "Killed Innocent Customers "

The head of a Senate panel investigating General Motors ignition switch recall questioned why the company’s general counsel, Michael Millikin, wasn’t fired in the aftermath of the company’s failure to recall 2.6 million vehicles for nearly a decade.

“How in the world in the aftermath of (the GM internal) report did Michael Millikin keep his job?” asked Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is heading the Senate Commerce panel holding a hearing Thursday. She said she didn’t understand how a legal department that had “this massive failure of responsibility, how he would be allowed to continue,” and said she plans to ask him detailed questions. “What kind of direction did he give a legal department that would allow them to do nothing in the face of the evidence they were confronting over years of litigation?”

GM’s culture of “lawyering up... killed innocent customers of General Motors,” she said.

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MattDarringer - 7/17/2014 12:48:20 PM

+1 Boost

Barra needs to do a clean sweep of GM legal.

Vette71 - 7/17/2014 1:56:00 PM

0 Boost

McCaskill is one of those attention getting screamers like Barbara Boxer. In most firms the legal department has the responsibility to offer legal advice and strategy to the business decision makers. Issues need to be brought to the attention of the legal department. Legal is not in the mainstream of what goes on in the company, unlike the finance or engineering departments are. Having worked at GM many, many moons ago, it is entirely possible this was one big CYA. The company had a screwed up culture decades ago. It is scary how little the Washington crew, starting at the head, really knows about how things work.

MattDarringer - 7/17/2014 7:30:21 PM

+2 Boost

The only problem is that legal DID know.