The automaker settled 297 cases involving fiery pickup crashes, a court document reveals.
General Motors Corp. has paid out at least $495 million — an average of more than $1.6 million per case — to settle a series of lawsuits brought by victims of fiery crashes involving a popular line of pickup trucks.
The revelation of the payouts emerged late Tuesday, when a federal judge in Missoula, Mont., released an exhibit in a case brought by the estate of a family killed in a pickup accident.
The cases involved C/K pickups that had fuel tanks mounted outside the vehicles’ protective frames. That made them prone to explode in crashes, critics say.
The dollar amounts in the document refer only to settlements reached before late 2000. It isn’t clear how much GM has shelled out since then, though C/K pickup cases have been dwindling steadily as the trucks age and drivers replace them.
The document — which The Times had asked the judge to unseal — provides a rare glimpse into the confidential settlements paid by a major corporation in a string of product liability cases. Typically, companies zealously guard such information from public view.
Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/07/business/fi-gm7
