Documents obtained by the New York Times show that General Motors remained silent and was intentionally misleading regarding the sudden power loss defect in its vehicles that caused many fatal crashes. We encourage you to read this article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/business/documents-show-general-motors-kept-silent-on-fatal-crashes.html?emc=edit_th_20140716&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=53795962&_r=1
As described in the article, Gene Erickson, a passenger in a Saturn Ion, was killed when the vehicle that he was riding in suddenly lost power and crashed into a tree. His family filed a lawsuit against GM. Although GM had already concluded during its internal investigation that the crash was caused by this defect, the company went out of its way to hide, and even lie, about its findings. When asked about the cause of the crash in the lawsuit, GM responded by claiming that there was not "sufficiently reliable information to accurately access the cause," that such information was protected by the attorney-client relationship, and that it had not assessed the cause of the accident.
These excuses turned out to be lies. This is a scary example of a big, powerful company putting profits before the truth and the safety of its customers. Unfortunately, this type of conduct is common in litigation against powerful companies such as GM. At Rourke and Blumenthal LLC, our Columbus product liability attorneys have run into this type of obstructionist behavior in the past, and we make it a point to continue to fight until we obtain the truth for our client.