Trial Lawyers Uncovered GM’s Deadly Ignition Switch, but GM Refused to Listen

Trial Lawyers Uncovered GM’s Deadly Ignition Switch, but GM Refused to Listen

By now we've all learned about General Motors' faulty ignition switches, responsible for dozens of deaths (the number is probably much greater) and numerous unnecessary injuries for its customers. Jim Bordas pioneered certain types of automobile product liability cases decades ago, including the first second-impact seatback collapse case won nationwide, in Strope v. Honda, so these reports are something we watch carefully. What interested me most about the news coverage though, is what we didn't hear or read about the history of this issue.

GM's own Valukas report is over 300 pages, so it's understandable a lot of reporters didn't read it all. New accounts tended to focus on the summary, where the report chalked up GM's scandalous behavior as its "failure to understand" a "complicated mystery." But when someone tells you something in plain words and you ignore it - that's not a "failure to understand" a "mystery," it's willful blindness that in this case had many, many fatal results. News sources especially liked a yarn GM spun about how, if only the part number had been changed by a lonely, careless engineer, these deaths could have been prevented. You probably heard that one a lot. Amber Marie Rose, killed in 2006 because of GM's faulty switch (pictured at right), did not live long enough to hear GM spin that tale for its present-day PR purposes.

If you read through it all, though, you find something interesting. GM did know about the problems with the switch. How did it know? Because trial lawyers told it so. Start on page 103, footnote 419, of the Valukas report, and you realize lawyers told GM what was happening with these vehicles more than ten years ago. More than one lawsuit uncovered the problem and presented detailed evidence to GM of exactly what was happening. But GM didn't listen. Instead, like many large companies, it issued automatic, blanket denials of wrongdoing, and deliberately buried its head in the sand. GM preferred to play to the public, claiming that "alcohol, the failure to wear seatbelts and high speeds" were the real cause of wrecks and deaths caused by its faulty swtich.

The Valukas report is replete with how GM and its legal counsel tried to think of anything it could blame these preventable highway deaths on, except the thing it had been sued for: air bags that did not deploy when they should. But GM did settle some of the cases confidentially, while internally refusing to fix the problem. When State Troopers specifically told GM that the ignition switch failures were causing these deaths, GM circular filed the information - engineers and lawyers claim not to have ever heard about documents GM received. Report at 115-116. NHTSA reports also logged complaints against GM for the very problem it claims only now to understand. More lawsuits, from more trial lawyers representing victims followed: GM explained them away and settled confidentially, while refusing to recognize the problem.

It gets worse, of course. GM actually made a warranty claim against the switch manufacturer for "ignition switch failures" in 2007, seven years before GM came (sort of) clean about what happened. The Volukas report incuriously reports that "no witness" could be "found" at GM who knew what GM was being paid off for on its warranty claim against Delphi for defective switches, while Americans were dying because of the same defective switches. Report at 128.

The Volukas report, of course, was paid for by GM and its investigators were picked by GM. It goes out of its way to say that engineers were "baffled" about events plainly described in lawsuits against the company. The report fairly revels in explaining how people at GM who learned damaging information never shared it, or how computer documents illustrating the defects were never accessed. Four years ago, there had been enough deaths that GM's own lawyers started telling GM it would not only lose the cases, but be subject to large awards of punitive damages. Report at 140-42, 148-149. But we are led to believe by the Report that crippling awards of punitive damages simply do not reach responsible management at GM.

The report sums up what happened in classic bureaucratese: GM simply suffered from a "failure to understand" what was happening in its own cars. That's one way to put it. Sinclair wrote that "[i]t is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." GM understood all right, because trial lawyers told it time and time again what was happening. But GM paid its people not to "understand" and it pays well.

Or should I say you paid them. We all paid them. The corporation that did this went bankrupt in 2008-09 and the American people bailed them out. While GM busied itself "not understanding" how Americans were being killed in its cars, no matter how many times it was told, We the People covered its empty bank accounts. After taking the bailout, according to Valukas, GM engineers were looking at actual photographs of Americans killed in their cars without any sense of "urgency":

Although he does not specifically remember, Sprague believed that fatalities were discussed; the deaths were apparent based on the files shared and pictures shown.681 The urgency of the situation should have been manifest . . . at the meeting, Wachtel, the Senior Manager of Product Investigations, expressed reluctance to take on the issue by opining that the incident rate was not high.

Report at 152. If only more Americans had the good sense to be killed in these cars, perhaps Mr. Wachtel could have brought himself to care. But it was not to be. And what does Mr. Wachtel have to say for himself, to the People who paid his lofty salary: "Wachtel denied attending the meeting at all, saying that he was told after the meeting to assign an investigator to the matter." Report at 152-53. At least mainstream reporting captured GM's name for its own indifference:

Wachtel's conduct is a demonstration of what Mary Barra described as the "GM nod": When everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room and does little.

Report at 154. One thing you can learn in the executive summary is this: "[w]hile the issue of the ignition switch passed through numerous hands at GM, from engineers to investigators to lawyers, nobody raised the problem to the highest levels of the company. As a result those in the best position to demand quick answers did not know questions needed to be asked." Report at 4. But this is not a mistake - it's not a "bug" in GM's programming that top people don't hear about problems like this. It's a feature. The top people all want to keep their jobs and to avoid embarrassment. So they are careful to make sure no one who works from them tells them anything they might have to answer for later.

Likewise, GM's Valukas report curiously mentions mainly the names of its defense lawyers and corporate lawyers who assisted in the coverup. It never credits the lawyers for victims that brought this matter to GM's attention more than ten years ago. Mary Barra, GM's CEO, has scapegoated some middle managers, endured her Capitol Hill grilling and moved along. But GM doesn't have any intention of crediting the people who first warned it about what it was doing - trial lawyers - because it's going right back to its business of denying the next problem, starting today.