If we are to believe the info attorney Lance Cooper says he has in sealed documents, the GM ignition switch debacle was not a simple screw-up, but — what he suggests — is a highly calculated coverup.
Cooper, who represented the Melton family in their recent settlement case, said internal communications between GM employees, its internal lawyers and outside law firms all fly in the face of the internal GM report led by attorney Anton Valukas. The documents, now sealed, will be revealed at a later date, according to The Detroit News.
Cooper says the correspondences clearly indicate that GM lawyers and others within the GM framework had prior knowledge of the ignition-switch problem before the vehicles were recalled – and Cooper claims this was no “pattern of incompetence,” as Valukas indicated, but a direct contradiction of GM’s internal investigation.
“Mr. Valukas chalked it up to incompetence, and we believe the documents and the testimony that will come out, it wasn’t incompetence, it was a coverup,” Cooper told the news outlet.
Former and current GM employees, as well as certain Delphi employees, will begin their depositions in relation to the ignition switch recall in May. Cooper hopes the depositions–an oral out-of-court testimony that can later be used for discovery purposes–will reveal more about what GM employees knew and when.
Cooper is hoping GM General Counsel Michael Millikin in particular, who is retiring this year, can shed some light on what he knew about the events.
The depositions are expected to last until the end of the year, according to Cooper. So, if there was a coverup that took place at GM, those details could emerge sometime later this year.
While these claims are strong, they have yet to be aired out and proven. For now, all we can do is stay tuned.
Comments
In other words, your taxes are not supporting idiots, but liars. They are in good company, most welfare recipients lie and cheat. And both are rewarded for failure.
My taxes, support liars in Washington. If taxpayers are still looking for a return on the sum of money that went into GMs reorganization, there’s others to ask and blame, not just GM. Give your elected representative a call, maybe he or she can hook you up with the Department of Treasury or something to work this out.
You cannot forget that a government agency known as the NHTSA knew about this, and they chose to do nothing. When something internal becomes external by knowledge of a third party, it is no longer really a lie or a coverup. Sure GM could have taken action back then. Why didn’t they? Who knows? It’s been said the company was unorganized, I can go with it. The thing is now, new GM is taking actions themselves, they are auditing plants, they are re-testing already released vehicles, looking for potential flaws, either made during supplier parts manufacturing, or assembly. We can continue going back on the past, or we can make safety, an important aspect, a top priority of the industry for the present into the future.