Paper Trail Haunts G.M. After It Loses Injury Suit
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The $4.9 billion verdict in a personal-injury lawsuit against General Motors on Friday might be only the start of the company’s problems. Lawyers and safety consultants pursuing similar cases say corporate documents used as evidence in the case, many for the first time, could be troublesome for General Motors in the future. The jury here awarded the record-setting damages to six people who were badly burned when the gas tank of their 1979 Chevrolet Malibu exploded after the car was rammed from behind by another vehicle. The plaintiffs have pledged to donate half of any punitive damages they collect after taxes to the state of California to pay for the care and treatment of burn victims, their lawyer, Brian J. Panish, said today. Central to the case was a 1973 ”value analysis” written by an Edward C. Ivey, an Oldsmobile engineer still employed by G.M., who calculated that fuel-tank fires after accidents were costing the company $2.40 per vehicle. Plaintiffs in the Los Angeles case had argued that General Motors did not design cars more safely because it would have cost the company more than it was losing in settlements with accident victims. ”The Ivey memo is an economic blueprint for lawyers,” said Clarence M. Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, a group co-founded by Ralph Nader that is involved in similar cases. ”It set a cost constraint on how much G.M. was willing to put into hardware to prevent a fire that was otherwise preventable.” More : query.nytimes.com |