According to two complaints filed against beleaguered automaker General Motors Co, the company has yet to recall all vehicles that have the ignition switch defects.
Bloomberg said one group complaint filed by 13 customers of the carmaker in the San Francisco Federal Court said that there are still cars of GM out there with defects that has been linked to deaths. The plaintiffs had claimed that key systems in Cobalts build through 2010 still has issues. The customers in the San Francisco lawsuit said that because of the defects, there had been 13 crashes and 13 deaths. The group are seeking for GM to cover the cost of repairs plus unspecific punitive damages.
The second lawsuit filed in a state court in Alabama cited a bulletin report that were allegedly issued to dealers, which cautioned them about the issue of keys sticking in or get binded in the ignition cylinders of Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars. Moreover, the plaintiffs claimed that the Detroit-based carmaker knew about the ignition defects in Cobalts that were built before the year 2009. On the other hand, Massachusetts-based Safety Research & Strategies Inc president Sean Kane, who was cited in the Alabama complaint, said that although the key system issue in Cobalts are not that hazardous compared to design flaws like airbag and engine power failures, he said that GM could have expanded the recall of the vehicles.
On March 18, GM vice president of global product development Mark Reuss, seemed to have rejected any notions that the automaker might have missed out other models that could have defects. Telling reporters, he said, "Where the switch was used in production, we have done a very accurate and complete read across."
In a statement after Bloomberg's request for a comment about the new lawsuits, GM said, "We will not comment specifically on the suit or pending litigation. We are recalling all of the vehicles that were manufactured with the specific ignition switch involved in this condition."
