A Texas jury to tossed out a lawsuit against GM involving its faulty ignition as the automaker claimed the plaintiffs fabricated evidence.
General Motors has won a significant legal victory as a Texas jury tossed out a case that claimed a defective ignition switch was the root cause of a fatal accident that killed one motorist.
A jury in Harris County, Texas, decided in favor of GM rather than plaintiff Zachary Stevens, who alleged that a defective switch caused him to lose control of his 2007 Saturn Sky and crash into another vehicle, killing the other driver. GM said Stevens’ reckless driving was at fault.
The manslaughter charges initially filed against the plaintiff in the civil suit were dropped after GM recalled 2.6 million vehicles with the switch in 2014, according to his lawsuit. It was one of a number of cases in which criminal charges lodged against drivers were set aside after reports of the defective switches became public.
Before the Texas case was decided, GM argued – out of earshot of the jury – that the plaintiffs had tried to bolster their case by fabricating evidence. The judge declined to dismiss the case and the lawsuit when to the jury anyway.
The defective ignition switches have been blamed for more than 125 deaths. The recalls, penalties and settlements triggered by the defective ignition switch cases have cost GM more than $2 billion to cover.
(GM pushes for dismissal of Texas ignition case. Click Here for the story.)
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before returning a unanimous verdict for GM, said company spokesman Jim Cain.
“We asked the jury to evaluate Zach Stevens’ case on the facts and they did,” Cain said in a statement. “The accident had nothing to do with the ignition switch.”
The case was the third involving the switch to go to trial since the beginning of the year. The first was voluntarily dismissed by plaintiffs during the trial, and the second resulted in a verdict clearing GM of liability for a 2014 crash in New Orleans.
(GM gambles on reversal of appeals court ruling. For more, Click Here.)
Meanwhile, a New York federal judge overseeing a number of trials over GM’s ignition-switch defect said “New” GM can retry the question of whether “Old” GM should have known about the defect before its 2009 bankruptcy.
The ruling could force plaintiffs to prove all over again that GM engineers knew the switch was defective. U.S. Judge Jesse Furman denied a plaintiffs request to apply the collateral estoppel doctrine — which bars certain issues from being litigated a second time.
Many of the claims of injured owners of the defective cars have already been settled through a process overseen by Kenneth Feinberg, a respected New York attorney who has administered claims in several high profile and sensitive cases.
(“New” GM scores a minor victory in court. Click Here for the details.)
Several plaintiffs, however, have rejected the settlement offers and opted to take the matter to court instead.