Melton v GM

choi

Bill Vlasic, GM Settles Switch Suit, Avoiding Depositions. Ending a sequel to a case that shook an automotive titan. New York Times, Mar 14, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/busin ... tim-settlement.html

(a) Excerpt in the window of print: GM engineers and leaders may avoid further testimony about safety issues.

(b) Quote:

(i) “The lawsuit was the second brought by the family of a Georgia woman, [first name: Jennifer] Brooke Melton, who died in 2010 in a car with a faulty ignition switch that has now been linked to at least 64 deaths.

(ii) “It was depositions in the Meltons’ first lawsuit that exposed the dangerous flaw in millions of small cars. * * * The family’s initial lawsuit was settled two years ago for $5 million, but only after GM officials admitted in depositions that the company had been unsuccessfully grappling with defective ignitions for a decade.

“Lawyers for Ms Melton’s family also discovered that GM had secretly upgraded its switches without changing the part’s identification number — further frustrating efforts to pinpoint the cause of dozens of accidents that caused deaths and injuries.

“The revelations in the initial case forced further investigations within GM that led to the company’s recall of about 2.6 million small cars, and prompted dozens of subsequent recalls of other models.

“After the switch recall prompted a congressional investigation and other government inquiries, Ms Melton’s family filed a second suit last year, claiming G.M. had knowingly sold unsafe cars.

“A lawyer for the victim’s parents, Ken and Beth Melton, said an aim of the second suit was to force GM to admit it had concealed evidence of the deadly ignition problem.


(c) My comment: The takeaway is that if your adversary in a legal proceeding obstructs justice, you may have a SECOND bite at the apple.
(i) Cobb County, Georgia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobb_County,_Georgia
(is situated immediately to the northwest of the city limits of Atlanta; named for Judge Thomas Willis Cobb, who served as a US Senator, state congressman and Superior Court Judge;
(ii) Georgia State Courts
www.courts.us/state/ga/courts.php
(“The Superior Court is Georgia's trial court of general jurisdiction. Each county seat has its own Superior Court. The state's 49 judicial circuits are composed of from one to eight counties and are organized into 10 districts.  State Courts have countywide jurisdiction over misdemeanors, traffic cases, and any civil actions where the Superior Court does not have exclusive jurisdiction. They can hear applications for search and arrest warrants and can hold preliminary hearings”)
(iii) The northern English surname Melton is name of many places, “all of which have the same origin as Middleton, with Old English middel replaced by its Old Norse equivalent meðal after the Scandinavian settlement of northern and eastern England.”
(iv) The second lawsuit:
Melton v General Motors, State Court of Cobb County, Georgia, Civil Action No 14A-1197-4
business.cch.com/plsd/MeltonvGM-Complaint.pdf(complaint filed on May 14, 2012
("fraudulent concealment")
(v) In a civil case of wrongful death, parents (and/or spouse, children) can sue, for loss of consortium (the term in Massachusetts state court; basically loss of companionship). But administrator(s) of the estate of the deceased may also sue, on behalf of the deceased.