The recent Texas ruling that rejected a “park it” order for recalled General Motors vehicles is but one headache the automaker has in courts around the United States. In California, plaintiffs are telling the court that the shield that the “New GM” is able to use to avoid litigation from the “Old GM” is “irrelevant.”
According to Bloomberg.com, the plaintiffs are seeking a discovery “in order to protect the public. General Motors’ argument regarding the impending filing with the Bankruptcy Court is a red herring and must be rejected.” They want information so they can possibly ask the judge to tell GM to disclose more information about its cars and expand its recall, including grounding the recalled vehicles.
The federal court in Corpus Christi, TX ruled that U.S. regulators such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are more qualified than the courts in determining whether the recalled vehicles should be grounded, and the NHTSA didn’t feel there was a need.
“Our full efforts are on our customers’ safety and fixing their vehicles as quickly as we can,” says General Motors Spokesman Kevin Kelly. “We also are conducting an unsparing, comprehensive review of the circumstances leading to the ignition switch recall to make sure something like this does not happen again.” However, he declined to comment on the California litigation.
Comments
Ok, yes there were lives lost, in this case, and it may have taken some time before any action took place. It is always sad, tragic, and unfortunate when lives are lost. I think a little more needs to be looked into for the reckless driving that was reported for some of these cases. Now this so called “shield”, I don’t think one really exists for GM not to claim responsibility. On legal documents GM and Chrysler became new companies in 2009. The only things that are the same are dealers that made it through, trademark names, BUICK, CHEVROLET, GMC, Cadillac, ac delco, etc. the new company I believe also owns the trademarks to the defunct brands. The same I believe happened for Chrysler. In public eyes these companies existed from their original founding dates, but from legal documents, from my understanding, can’t you say that GM and Chrysler as they exist today were founded in 2009? The old GM and old Chrysler still exist, but they changed the name, the old GM is known as motors liquidation company. The new GM is doing fine with this, I would think a “shield” or some kind of coverage would have had to been put into place to protect the newer company in the event that something like this were to happen. I believe that the government knows this, I also believe they’re just using this for politics as usual.
Well the families that have lost someone will get their day in court and GM will settle with them as it is cheaper to settle vs. fight. We will never hear the results as they generally get a non disclosure settlement.
The Shield I think for the most parts will protect GM from the many who want to go to quart that have never really had a case in the first place They did suffer a loss or even damages. If you look many of the people represented may have had a car stall but never had anything other than that happen.
Much of this is just lawyers wanting to go to court and finding someone to represent to try to gain a go away settlement and take 50% of the take from the settlement.
I believe unless someone has a injury or worse that many of these cases will get tossed.