Under the compensation fund started by General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) for accidents caused because of faulty ignition switches, the company has found two more eligible death claims along with four injuries claims. The compensation program started accepting claim applications on August 1, 2014.
According to the recent reports, the claim program has received up to 1,851 claims for injuries and deaths associated with faulty ignition switch in GM cars. The compensation program has approved 67 claims until now out of which 32 are death claims and 35 fall under the injury claim category. Under the claims for injury, 5 claims were approved for permanent damage whereas 30 were approved for hospitalization claims. These figures were released by Kenneth Feinberg’s office.
A spokesperson for the program confirmed 40 proposals until now out of which 28 were accepted by the victims. The rate of filing claims has slowed down during the week with 4% increase from the previous week and Feinberg earlier estimated these rates to accelerate at the initial and final stage of the program.
General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) appointed Feinberg to look through the settlement process with no involvement from the management and the company earlier announced an uncapped fund of $400 million for the compensation program.
Some of the recent emails released from the company indicated that General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) issued an order for 500,000 ignition switches nearly two months before recalling the vehicles. These notifications came out against plaintiffs’ lawsuit claiming that the company should have informed the customers about the faulty ignition switch.
Bob Hilliard, attorney of the plaintiffs, said,
“That’s not information that should be kept from the customer until after you’ve ordered parts. GM was busy covering its own rear end. We know as a fact they ordered half a million parts [in December 2013]. That’s a de facto recall.”
The case is likely to commence in January 2016. The defective ignition switch can cut power to safety features including airbags and braking abilities of the vehicle.
This article has been written by Prakash Pandey.
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