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In a blow to General Motors Co (GM.N), a federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed part of a bankruptcy court ruling that protected the automaker from some lawsuits over an ignition switch defect that prompted the recall of 2.6 million vehicles in 2014. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said barring plaintiffs from suing the automaker over crashes and lost vehicle value stemming from the faulty switch would violate their constitutional rights to due process, since they had not been notified of the defect prior to GM's 2009 bankruptcy. The ruling effectively rebuffs GM's attempts to shield...

The Obama Administration's Justice Department is now suing Volkswagen for "up to $90 billion for allegedly violating environmental law." Politically-favored General Motors was fined $900 million, or 1% of that amount, for covering up an ignition switch defect that led to the deaths of at least 124 people. At last count, the number of people who lost their lives as a result of emissions' tampering by VW stood at zero. Meanwhile, the GM board unanimoulsy elected CEO Mary Barra as its Chairman, demonstrating that it is still not independent of the White House political operation, even years after the...

A civil trial set to start this month in New York City will test the legal boundaries of hundreds of claims remaining against General Motors Co. stemming from faulty ignition switches. The case involves an Oklahoma man who blames a defective ignition switch for preventing his air bags from deploying during a crash. It's the first trial to result from hundreds of lawsuits filed against GM after the auto giant revealed in 2014 that faulty ignition switches in Chevy Cobalts and other small cars necessitated an unprecedented recall. The switches can slip out of the "on" position, causing the cars...

NEW YORK: A U.S. judge on Monday said that General Motors Co may be liable for punitive damages in lawsuits it faces over an ignition switch problem that prompted the recall of millions of vehicles last year. The decision from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber in Manhattan could increase GM's financial exposure to claims for injuries, deaths or loss of vehicle value stemming from the 2014 recall. Unlike compensatory damages, which are meant to make up for plaintiffs' losses, punitive damages are designed to punish defendants for egregious or negligent conduct, and to deter future misbehavior. Gerber said, however, post-bankruptcy...

A report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security has found that the Department’s Federal Protective Service (FPS) division wasted about $2.5 million of taxpayer money in 2014 on an extravagant fleet vehicle program. It is not surprising that images show that the vehicles in question appear to be manufactured by crony company , General Motors. A House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, headed by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), requested the audit on the FPS’ fleet operation. The report unveils a fleet of 1,169 vehicles which were leased at...

Corruption: One carmaker's mistake killed nearly 200. Another might have evaded federal emissions laws while a third failed to issue a recall. Which one committed the biggest sin, according to the government? Here's a hint: It's not the automaker known as Government Motors. GM, more officially known as General Motors, will pay a $900 million fine in a settlement reached last week with the Justice Department. The automaker admits it hid an ignition-switch problem that has been linked to 174 deaths.

The response of the Justice Department to General Motors’ ignition switch defect cover-up was announced last week. GM’s failure to address the deadly defect led to the loss of lives of at least 169 people. Any hopes for the families of the victims that the crony status of GM would not stand in the way of justice were squashed as the company was given a slap on the wrist by its friends at the Obama Administration. The Justice Department’s news release regarding the meager $900 million penalty reeked of hypocrisy as it tried to paint a picture of a repentant...

The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has concluded that there was criminal wrongdoing by General Motors as the company covered-up a deadly ignition switch defect for years. That defect has now been blamed for causing the deaths of at least 104 motorists. While many observers may have been able to come to the conclusion that GM was guilty long before the Justice Department’s recent epiphany, the bigger question now is, what’s next? GM still faces litigation risks as ongoing lawsuits seek justice for the victims’ families that suffered as a result of GM’s criminal actions. Full...

General Motors will likely be prosecuted over ignition switches linked to deathsFederal prosecutors are closing in on criminal charges against General Motors Co. over a faulty ignition switch linked to more than 100 deaths, but they are still weighing whether to charge individual employees, according to people familiar with the matter. The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office has determined GM likely broke the law by making misstatements about the ignition-switch glitch in older Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars for more than a decade and will likely extract a fine exceeding $1 billion from the company, the people said. GM will either...

Depositions for General Motors’ executives, including CEO Mary Barra, will begin in May, according to the Detroit News. The testimonies will be at the center of class-action lawsuits (set for trial in January, 2016) against GM for its ignition switch defect cover-up and are slated to conclude in early October of this year. It will not be the first time Barra has testified under oath about the recall debacle which is now blamed for having caused 74 deaths. Attorneys for plaintiffs now claim they have evidence that GM executives knew about (and covered-up) the defects long before they admitted...

DETROIT — In a notable victory for General Motors, a lawsuit that helped spur the biggest safety crisis in the company’s history has been withdrawn in exchange for a settlement from its compensation program, according to two people briefed on the agreement. The lawsuit was the second brought by the family of a Georgia woman, Brooke Melton, who died in 2010 in a car with a faulty ignition switch that has now been linked to at least 64 deaths. For G.M., the agreement removes the significant legal threat of senior officials, including Mary T. Barra, the automaker’s chief executive, being...

The death toll for General Motors' faulty ignition switch victims continues to rise with the last reported number being 42. There has been speculation that the death count is significantly higher, as safety advocate Clarence Ditlow has written to GM to request an expansion of efforts to uncover victims of accidents resulting from defective GM vehicles. GM has known about the ignition switch defect for years and failed to recall the deadly vehicles for almost five years after the Obama Administration took over the company in June of 2009. President Obama's Auto Task Force guided the company through a...

Today, we requested that the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform undertake an "independent" investigation of the General Motors ignition switch recall delay, in light of newly obtained emails by lawyers suing GM. Those emails suggest that the Treasury may have timed its final sale of GM shares to precede public knowledge of the ignition switch fiasco. They also cast doubt on GM CEO Mary Barra's previous account of what she knew and when she knew it. Here is the text of a letter I sent today to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, in photo, the incoming Chairman of the...

The evidence continues to mount that General Motors has been less than transparent, if not outright culpable, regarding its ignition switch recall fiasco. As the death toll mounts (from the original 13 casualties reported by GM to the just revised 32 deaths) for victims involved in crashes of GM vehicles with defective ignition switches, new evidence has emerged that GM actually ordered replacement parts for the defective switches a full two months before they even reported a problem. A Wall Street Journal article published on Sunday unveiled the damning evidence that GM placed an order for half a million replacement...

WASHINGTON — Only three months ago, Mary T. Barra arrived for the first time on Capitol Hill to apologize — publicly, profusely and personally — for General Motors’ long failure to recall millions of small cars. On Thursday, Ms. Barra returned to Washington again, and this time, she drew the line. As senator after senator offered more bruising criticism of G.M., Ms. Barra, G.M.'s chief, signaled that there were limits to what the automaker would do. G.M., she said, will not expand its compensation program for victims. The company will not waive its protection from lawsuits gained in bankruptcy reorganization....

(Reuters) - Federal prosecutors are developing a criminal fraud case hinged on whether General Motors made misleading statements about a deadly ignition switch flaw, and are examining activity dating back a decade, before GM's 2009 bankruptcy, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. At the same time, at least a dozen states are investigating the automaker. Two state officials said that effort is likely to focus on whether GM broke consumer protection laws. Both federal and state investigations into the switch, which is linked to at least 13 deaths and 54 crashes, are at early stages, and it is...

House lawmakers told General Motors CEO Mary Barra on Wednesday that they were not satisfied with her company’s own probe into the slow recall of defective, deadly vehicles. "I want to be clear today that our investigation does continue,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), said. Barra was returning to Capitol Hill for the first time since releasing an internal review that found GM had a pattern of " incompetence and neglect " that led to its failure to recall more than two million defective cars made from the mid-2000’s until earlier this year. GM fired 15 people...

DETROIT — To the legal department at General Motors, secrecy ruled. Employees were discouraged from taking notes in meetings. Workers’ emails were examined once a year for sensitive information that might be used against the company. G.M. lawyers even kept their knowledge of fatal accidents related to a defective ignition switch from their own boss, the company’s general counsel, Michael P. Millikin. An internal investigation released on Thursday into the company’s failure to recall millions of defective small cars found no evidence of a cover-up. But interviews with victims, their lawyers and current and former G.M. employees, as well as...

Video of press conference at source. General Motors has dismissed 15 employees and disciplined five others in the wake of an internal investigation into the company's handling of defective ignition switches, which lead to at least 13 fatalities. GM CEO Mary Barra says the personnel worked in several areas including engineering, legal and public policy, and that a disproportionate number of them were senior executives or higher. Barra described the conclusions of the investigation as “extremely thorough, brutally tough, and deeply troubling.” Barra says that the report found no conspiracy to cover up facts or trade-off between safety and cost,...

DETROIT — As General Motors faces a number of continuing investigations into its handling of a vehicle safety defect linked to 13 deaths, its legal department has become a focus of a broad internal inquiry into how the company handled the issue, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation. Even as G.M. acknowledged that it knew about the defect for more than a decade, it has insisted that work on the ignition problem was limited to a handful of midlevel employees. But a review of internal documents, emails and interviews paint a different picture, showing that high-ranking officials,...