DETROIT — General Motors on Thursday said it had settled a wrongful death case that was set to go to trial next month as part of ongoing litigation over the company’s defective ignition switches.þþG.M., the nation’s largest automaker, had already won two so-called bellwether trials being conducted to resolve a variety of legal claims tied to its recall two years ago of vehicles equipped with faulty ignitions.þþThe settlement of the latest case was unexpected, and an indication that G.M. may have wanted to avoid a protracted jury trial involving a fatal accident.þþIn a filing with the United States District Court in New York, G.M. said it had reached a settlement with the wife of James E. Yingling, who died in a 2013 accident in Pennsylvania while in a Saturn Ion equipped with a defective ignition.þþPatrick Morrissey, a G.M. spokesman, said the terms of the settlement were confidential.þþCarl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, who has closely followed the ignition-switch litigation, said G.M. “may have preferred to avoid a plaintiff’s verdict and possibly large damages that would have helped many other plaintiffs in settlement negotiations.”þþThe case was next on the schedule of six bellwether trials covering about 235 injury and wrongful-death cases that are pending in state and federal courts.þþAll the cases were consolidated in New York for the process, which aims to set parameters for damages in different categories of accidents involving faulty switches.þþThe first bellwether case was dismissed in January because of accusations that the plaintiff had given misleading testimony about his health and financial situation.þþLast month, a jury in a subsequent trial found that a faulty ignition switch did not cause a 2014 accident that injured two people.þþThe Yingling case would have been the first bellwether trial to involve a fatal crash.þþMr. Yingling was killed when he lost control of his Ion compact sedan on a state highway near his home in Bedford County, Pa. The suit charged that the crash was caused by an ignition defect that shut off the car’s engine and disabled its airbags.þþVictor H. Pribanic, the lawyer representing Mr. Yingling’s wife, said he was satisfied that the case had been settled. “We are pleased this matter has been resolved and very proud of our client, Nadia Yingling,” he said on Thursday in an email.þþThe bellwether litigation is one of the final phases of G.M.’s efforts to move past its ignition switch crisis, which started two years ago when the company admitted that for a decade it had failed to disclose the defective switch in millions of small cars.þþSince then, the company has paid about $600 million to settle 399 ignition-switch claims, including 124 death cases.þþIt also has announced a settlement of $275 million covering an additional 1,385 death and injury claims, and a $300 million payment to settle a class-action suit by shareholders.þþThe automaker last year agreed to pay $900 million to settle a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. It had also previously agreed to fines by the Transportation Department, as well as long-term monitoring of its safety procedures by government regulators.þ
Source: NY Times
