GM recall falls short, filings say

Suits allege faulty key systems in Cobalts built after ’07

General Motors Co., facing lawsuits in the U.S. and Canada over faulty ignition switches, did not recall all Chevrolet Cobalts with the defects, according to two complaints filed Monday against the carmaker.

Although the flawed switches prompted GM to recall 1.6 million cars, including Cobalts for the model years 2005-07, the company didn’t target all defects that have been linked to deaths, according to a complaint filed by 13 customers in federal court in San Francisco. A second lawsuit in Alabama state court cites technical service bulletins that GM purportedly sent to dealers alerting them that keys might “stick” or “bind” in the ignition cylinders of nonrecalled Cobalts and other cars.

The San Francisco complaint includes a claim that Cobalts through model year 2010 have the faulty key systems, while the Alabama customers allege Detroit-based GM knew of problems with Cobalts built before April 2009.

GM didn’t address design flaws that could lead to accidents, said Sean Kane, president of Rehoboth, Mass.-based Safety Research & Strategies Inc., which researches product hazards.

“GM may have to expand the recall,” he said. “Note that the driver’s knee can turn the key off, too.”

Kane said the difficulty of removing Cobalt keys, cited in the Alabama suit, is less hazardous than a design flaw that could cause airbags and engine power to fail.

GM shares fell 63 cents, or 1.8 percent, to close Tuesday at $34.51 in New York trading.

“We will not comment specifically on the suit or pending litigation,” the company said in a statement. “We are recalling all of the vehicles that were manufactured with the specific ignition switch involved in this condition.”

Mark Reuss, GM’s vice president of global product development, said last week that the automaker has already identified all the models that used the flawed switches.

“Where the switch was used in production, we have done a very accurate and complete read across,” Reuss told reporters.

The defects have been linked to 31 crashes and 13 deaths, according to the San Francisco complaint, in which customers seek repairs plus unspecific punitive damages. GM revised the figure to 12 deaths as it said it had double-counted.

In the Alabama case, Lance Cooper, an attorney from Georgia who represents the family of Aubrey Wallace Williams, a woman who died in a Cobalt crash in December, sent government regulators a letter last month saying there are more faulty GM models still on the road.

Six days later, on Feb. 25, the automaker more than doubled its recall to include other mid-2000s GM models, including Saturn Ions and Pontiac Solstices, saying their ignition switches could unexpectedly turn off if jostled by a driver or weighed down by a heavy ring of keys, cutting power to the engine and air bags.

Former Alabama Lt. Gov. Jere Beasley, another attorney for the plaintiffs said GM knew about the problems as early as2001, but chose to cover it up rather than make an inexpensive fix. He said an investigator took another look at Williams’ wreck after GM announced the recall last month and found that the ignition failed.

“You are going to find out that over a decade, they sat on and covered up a known safety issue,” Beasley said.

The cases are Maciel v. General Motors LLC, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco); and Smith v. General Motors LLC, 41-cv-2014-900140, Circuit Court of Lauderdale County, Ala.

Information for this article was contributed by Linda Sandler, Patrick G. Lee, Jeff Green and Tim Higgins of Bloomberg News and Phillip Rawls of The Associated Press.

Business, Pages 25 on 03/26/2014

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