Plaintiffs Lawyers Suing GM Assail Internal Report
From the National Law Journal
Plaintiffs lawyers who have sued General Motors Co. over its ignition switch recalls on Thursday criticized the automaker’s internal investigative report as biased and incomplete.
The 315-page report, released on Thursday, concluded that GM failed to identify ignition switch defects—which have been linked to 13 deaths—due to incompetence among its employees, not a cover-up by senior executives. GM fired 15 employees and disciplined five others.
“The ignition switch issue was touched by numerous parties at GM—engineers, investigators, lawyers—but nobody raised the problem to the highest levels of the company,” said CEO Mary Barra, who described the report as “extremely thorough, brutally tough and deeply troubling.”
The report, conducted by former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas, chairman of Jenner & Block, is GM’s explanation as to why it recalled 2.6 million vehicles for ignition switch problems this year. Documents that GM submitted to Congress indicate the company knew about the defects for the past decade.
Mark Robinson, senior partner of Robinson, Calcagnie, Robinson Shapiro Davis Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif., said the Valukas report, some of which is redacted, is just a start.
“The report today makes us think there’s a lot more questions that we want answered,” he said. “There are a lot of apologies in here, a lot of admissions of wrongdoing, and I commend GM for that, making this public. On the other hand, these admissions are shocking. It makes me wonder what more we’re going to get out of these documents.”
Read more in our daily News Update...
From the National Law Journal
Plaintiffs lawyers who have sued General Motors Co. over its ignition switch recalls on Thursday criticized the automaker’s internal investigative report as biased and incomplete.
The 315-page report, released on Thursday, concluded that GM failed to identify ignition switch defects—which have been linked to 13 deaths—due to incompetence among its employees, not a cover-up by senior executives. GM fired 15 employees and disciplined five others.
“The ignition switch issue was touched by numerous parties at GM—engineers, investigators, lawyers—but nobody raised the problem to the highest levels of the company,” said CEO Mary Barra, who described the report as “extremely thorough, brutally tough and deeply troubling.”
The report, conducted by former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas, chairman of Jenner & Block, is GM’s explanation as to why it recalled 2.6 million vehicles for ignition switch problems this year. Documents that GM submitted to Congress indicate the company knew about the defects for the past decade.
Mark Robinson, senior partner of Robinson, Calcagnie, Robinson Shapiro Davis Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif., said the Valukas report, some of which is redacted, is just a start.
“The report today makes us think there’s a lot more questions that we want answered,” he said. “There are a lot of apologies in here, a lot of admissions of wrongdoing, and I commend GM for that, making this public. On the other hand, these admissions are shocking. It makes me wonder what more we’re going to get out of these documents.”
Read more in our daily News Update...