CEO Barra, GM execs, face query over ignition recalls
Up to 35 current and former General Motors executives, including CEO Mary Barra, could be deposed later this year by a Texas lawyer leading the personal injury portion of a lawsuit arising from the defective ignition switches the automaker recalled last year.
Robert Hilliard, a lawyer based in Corpus Christi, Texas, said today he will begin the series of depositions in May with Alicia Boler-Davis, GM senior vice president, and end it in October with Barra.
The list of people to be deposed includes several former GM attorneys who were among 15 employees fired for not telling their bosses sooner how serious the ignition switch defect was.
GM declined to comment on a statement released by Hilliard, but did confirm it had received a schedule of deposition dates.
GM and Hilliard could settle the case. The plaintiffs chose not to pursue or accept settlements through the GM Ignition Compensation Fund led by Ken Feinberg.
Feinberg and his staff have offered settlements to families of 67 victims who died in crashed caused by the defective ignition switches. The fund staff is reviewing more than 1,400 applications.
In his statement, Hilliard claimed that "this will be the first time GM employees will be made to answer difficult questions under oath about the specific details of the documents and their role in these deaths and injuries."
Another lawyer, Lance Cooper, settled the case of a Georgia couple, Ken and Beth Melton, whose daughter Brooke died in a 2010 crash in her 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt that was equipped with the defective ignition switch. That settlement was brokered by Feinberg. As a condition of that settlement Cooper agreed to not release documents related to the Meltons' case.
Cooper and another lawyer for the Meltons, Jere Beasley, said documents disclosed in future cases such as Hilliard's would show high ranking GM executives knew about the defective ignition switches long before they initiated the recall and covered up the problem.
When pressed to name which executives had prior knowledge, neither Cooper nor Beasley would cite anyone.