Free Republic

(Reuters) - A new lawsuit says General Motors Co should compensate millions of car and truck owners for lost resale value, potentially exceeding $10 billion, because a slew of recalls and a deadly delay in recalling cars with defective ignition switches has damaged its brand. According to a complaint filed on Wednesday with the federal court in Riverside, California, GM hurt customers by concealing known defects and valuing cost-cutting over safety, leading to roughly 40 recalls covering more than 20 million vehicles this year alone. It said this has caused a variety of late-model vehicles to lose roughly $500 to...

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette wants General Motors to explain how it plans to fix what’s been described as a lax corporate culture and how the company plans to compensate victims of crashes tied to faulty ignition switches. The Colorado Democrat on Monday outlined questions she’ll pose to new GM CEO Mary Barra during a congressional hearing Wednesday. DeGette, the ranking member of the House committee investigating GM’s recall of 2.6 million small cars, noted a company-commissioned report released this month that showed “the GM corporate culture was so siloed that they were unable to catch some of the safety problems...

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore believes that whoever was responsible at General Motors for failing to recall a faulty ignition switch deserves death. "I am opposed to the death penalty, but to every rule there is usually an exception, and in this case I hope the criminals at General Motors will be arrested and made to pay for their pre-meditated decision to take human lives for a lousy ten bucks," he wrote. Moore blamed former President George W. Bush's transportation Department for ignoring the problem in 2007 and praised new GM CEO Mary Barra for telling the truth about the problem.

General Motors has halted the sale of most of the Chevrolet Cruzes now on dealers' lots. The Cruze is GM's best selling U.S. car model. Spokesman Alan Adler confirmed that GM has ordered a halt to sales of models with the 1.4-liter turbo engine, the most popular version of the compact car. Adler did not give the reason for the halt, and said there hasn't been a recall issued on cars already sold. The news comes as GM deals with a damaging recall of 1.6 million small cars worldwide to deal with an ignition switch flaw that has been linked...

A report has linked faulty airbags in two of the six models recalled by General Motors to 303 deaths. The study, commissioned by the Center for Auto Safety, reviewed US federal crash data for the models. GM has recalled nearly 1.6 million vehicles over faulty ignition switches which could turn off the engine, disabling the airbags. But it has disputed the number in the report, saying it only looked at raw data and did not evaluate the reasons. "Without rigorous analysis, it is pure speculation to attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions," the company said in a statement. "In contrast,...