Thursday, March 31, 2016
Plaintiffs Lose Second GM Ignition Switch Trial
You can find the report by Erik Larson & Patricia Hurtado on Bloomberg here. Bill Vlasic at the New York Times also has a piece on the win for GM.
This case involved a crash on an icy bridge in New Orleans during a rare ice storm in that part of the country. The plaintiffs suffered minor injuries.
The jury found the accident was caused by the ice storm, not the defect. It did, however, also find that the car was "unreasonably dangerous." With respect to that determination, Prof. Carl Tobias (Richmond) is quoted in the Bloomberg article saying: “The plaintiffs can claim a victory at least insofar as the jury made that finding, which is a critical finding. Every case will be on its own merits, but I think they can claim that as an important development.”
It looks like one can find documents relating to the case here. The next case to go to trial is Yingling v. GM, which was the subject of the dispute earlier this year.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/mass_tort_litigation/2016/03/plaintiffs-lose-second-gm-ignition-switch-trial-.html