General Motors defective brakes lawsuit gets class action status
Filed in Arkansas, a class action is being charged against General Motors for selling 4 million vehicles that had defectively designed brakes.
The lead plaintiff Boyd Bryant sued on behalf of himself and others who had purchased the faulty vehicles.
The complaint alleges that General Motors sold pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles whose parking brakes did not float inside the parking brakes drums properly due to a defectively designed spring clip between 1999 and 2002.
The suit accuses GM of fraudulent concealment, unjust enrichment and breach of express and implied warranties and seeks damages for repairs or reimbursement.
Bryant claims General Motors discovered the design flaw in late 2000 so the company redesigned the spring clip in October 2001. However, the car manufacturer did not take responsibility from the dealers for the defect until January 2003. As a result, the company escaped paying millions of dollars in warranty claims.
The suit accuses General Motors of fraudulent concealment, unjust enrichment and breach of express and implied warranties and seeks damages for repairs or reimbursement.
In its defense, General Motors’ lawyers argued on appeal —as product-defect laws vary from state to state, the courts should have addressed the choice-of-law issue, or the issue of which jurisdiction’s laws would apply in the case, so a nation-wide class action certification was not justified.
However, the state Supreme Court said last week that this ruling was right not to conduct a choice-of-law analysis at this stage in the case.
“Were we to require the circuit court to conclude at this time precisely which law should be applied, such a decision could potentially stray into the merits of the action itself, which we have clearly stated shall not occur during the certification process,” Justice Paul Danielson wrote for the court.
General Motors also argued that appropriate remedies will vary from person to person, so the claims could be better addressed on an individual case-by-case basis.
The Supreme Court disagreed as the main issue at hand was the brakes were defective and whether GM concealed any alleged defects, though there were some differences in facts amongst the class members’ cases.
The proceeds of the case could range from $80 million to $150 million for car owners, and up to $16.5 million for the plaintiff’s attorneys.
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