All victims eligible for General Motors’ ignition switch compensation fund have accepted the automaker’s offer, lawyer Kenneth Feinberg told Bloomberg Friday. The compensation fund is intended to reduce the number of lawsuits filed against the automaker following last year’s ignition switch recall, with victims waving their right to sue after taking GM’s monetary offer.
“So far, at least, every single eligible claimant awarded compensation has elected voluntarily to take it,” Feinberg said. “To my knowledge, no eligible claimant has rejected the compensation and voluntarily decided to litigate.”
Feinberg has awarded 125 claims, 50 of them for deaths, out of the 3,068 claims GM has received since opening the compensation fund last August. Nearly 1,300 claims have been dismissed, while another 1,650 are still being processed. Feinberg and his team stop accepting new claims on January 31st.
The compensation fund may have succeeded at reducing the number of lawsuits filed against GM, the company is still facing over 150 lawsuits and is fighting millions of faulty vehicle owners for their car’s lost value. Meanwhile, Feinberg says he’ll be processing the remaining 1,600 requests “well into the spring.”
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