Court Rules The GM Can Not Hide Behind Bankruptcy To Avoid Ignition Switch Lawsuits

The best line in the article was this: "Many of the claims we face have been brought on behalf of car owners who want to be compensated even though they have not suffered any loss."

If there was no loss, they deserve not a penny, but hey, if you have a Cobalt, make some money.

I have no problem with the people who suffered loss being compensated, but not the free for all that this will be for attorneys.

+1

BTW, when I saw MDarringer's post, it had a total score of 0. Evidently, there's either someone who hates MDarringer and will vote him down no matter what he says, or there are folks who are all for getting money from a lawsuit, regardless if they've suffered no actual loss, and the matter can be easily resolved through a simple recall. In *my* mind, the sense of "greed by lawsuit," something America is famous for, is a dark mark on the prevalent culture of this nation :-(

Hah! Tell that to the VW TDI cars who are awaiting a check from VAG. No harm no foul ?

As for both GM and VAG, the punishment is for knowingly obstructing/lying about their knowledge of the problem (management playing dumb), not the problem itself. There was a parallel in how executives from both companies initially responded to inquiries: the root cause was created by low level technical people and management was not aware of it.

As for pluses or minuses, I don't think anyone would sweat over the number. I think the worst one would be the "1" since nobody cares about your opinion to chime in. No doubt MD is the most "popular" on this board but I don't envy him.

Henry - what you missed was that the difference between the two is that the VW problem did indeed cause a loss - for the environment - in addition to the loss of value to the cars.

In the case of the GM - it was a small part that was easily fixed and did not cause the same kinds of losses. Of course - the problem MIGHT be that some people did get involved in crashes where their Air Bags did not go off - causing injury - and those are among the ones who are suing. However I suspect that this will be overturned as well.

The VW situation is completely different than GM and it's apples to oranges.

VW's cheating essentially caused the owners to lose equity in their cars--in addition to the dubious BS about environmental damage--and every TDI owner lost value and deserve to be compensated.

In the case of GM, every owner DID NOT have a negative impact of injury or death. In fact, the lion's share of vehicles with the faulty ignition switch never had any incidents. Therefore letting the owners of every GM car get "shoulda" money is ridiculous, but most decidedly a naked grab for money.

I clearly believe in punishing companies severely for breaking the law, but I do not believe in whopping punitive damages for people who were in no way impacted.

As for people voting me down, I wear it as a badge of honor. The mere fact that these pathetic teenagers think that by voting me down they will break my spirit is laughable. They also don't catch on that I can play them like a fiddle and they fall for it EVERY time.

@TomM: these are punitive damage claims, which can go beyond actual damages (such as injuries and loss of lives). The extent of punitive damage depends on how creative the plaintiff lawyer is, and will be sorted out in court.

The ruling in discussion prevents GM from walking away from such liability for their wrong doing, even in the event of company restructuring.

Last year the New GM paid the DOJ $900M fine for their crimes (See USA Today below), there is no reason they are protected from punitive damages for the same crimes.

Note how little the fine was for the extent of the crimes, and how easy it is for GM to get away with their serious offenses: "those counts would be dismissed in three years if GM fixes its recall processes".

This new ruling will change the outcome and make GM more accountable for their bad deeds.


USA Today Sept 2015:
General Motors agreed to pay $900 million as part of a Justice Department investigation into its failure to fix a deadly ignition-switch defect blamed for more than 120 deaths.
Federal prosecutors hit GM with a wire-fraud charge and a charge for "engaging in a scheme to conceal a deadly safety defect" from regulators. But those counts would be dismissed in three years if GM fixes its recall processes. GM's official plea is not guilty.

Link to full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/09/17/gm-justice-department-ignition-switch-defect-settlement/32545959/

Link to ignition issue timeline:
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/31/297158876/timeline-a-history-of-gms-ignition-switch-defect

GM hiding of the faulty component/engineering was criminal if not murder. Car owners might be able to show greater depreciation as public avoided these vehicles due to the bad PR. Similar to VWs depreciation compensation.

Criminal yes. But once the ignition switches are replaced, the damage has been undone. Also, once the ignition switches are replaced, whatever loss of value there might have been is gone. All of these cars had hideous resale value to begin with so the switches would not have caused a precipitous loss of value.