Case Notes

'Similar Incident' Evidence Permitted at GM Trial

Evidence of similar incidents involving ignition defects and air bag deployment failures in General Motors vehicles may be introduced at the company's trial that began in January, a federal judge has ruled. Southern District Judge Jesse Furman said the plaintiff, in the first bellwether product liability trial on alleged ignition defects that cause vehicles to lose power, “established a prima facie case for admission of at least some OSI” or “other similar incident” evidence. However, Furman cautioned that, during pre-trial, he would seriously vet evidence of 15 OSIs being offered by lawyers for plaintiff Robert Scheuer.

Furman's ruling came the last week of December in In re General Motors LLC Ignition Switch Litigation, 14-MD-2543, a multi-district litigation being pursued by hundreds of plaintiffs against General Motors.

Seeking more details from the plaintiff, the judge deferred ruling on specific evidence of 15 other similar incidents that Scheuer, who was injured when his 2003 Saturn Ion crashed in Oklahoma in 2014, wants to introduce at the trial. But Furman held that, “as a general matter” the “15 other incidents at issue are 'substantially similar' to be admitted, certainly to prove notice, but also to prove causation.”

The judge said a significant factor on admissibility in the product liability context is whether the OSIs being offered, the earliest of which go back to 2003, involve the same defect. “The 15 incidents identified by plaintiff all involved the same allegedly defective ignition switch as the one at issue here; all involved airbag non-deployment despite substantial frontal-impact collisions, as here; and nearly all involved off-road conditions, as here,” he said.

Furman said the company, now calling itself New GM after bankruptcy, “itself effectively treated the incidents as substantially similar” until it was faced with having them admitted at trial. “Nearly all of the 15 other incidents were included in New GM's various admissions to crashes caused by the ignitions switch defect-including submissions made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the statement of facts to which New GM agreed as part of the deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice, and the Valukas Report,” he said, referring to the report prepared on the ignition scandal by Jenner & Block chairman Anton Valukas. ' Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal

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