Current Events

General Motors is recalling more than half a million Chevrolet Camaros because of the danger that a bump to the keys could suddenly turn off the ignition — a problem similar to the defect that led the automaker to recall millions of small cars this year.

G.M. said that a driver’s knee could jostle the key fob, causing the ignition to turn off and cutting the engine. The automaker said it was aware of three crashes and four injuries related to the defect, which is in about 510,000 Camaros worldwide from the 2010 to 2014 model years.

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DETROIT (AP) -- Lawyers for a Georgia family that is trying to reopen a wrongful death lawsuit against General Motors say the company is trying to move the case to federal court so it can use bankruptcy as a shield from the claim.
 
The lawyers, Lance Cooper and Jere Beasley, said Wednesday in a statement that GM's court filings run counter to a promise made by GM CEO Mary Barra to fairly compensate families of people killed or those injured in crashes caused by defective ignition switches.

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Washington— General Motors Co. is in compliance with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s request for documents in connection with the government’s investigation into the automaker’s recall of 2.6 million vehicles linked to 13 deaths and 54 crashes, and the automaker is no longer racking up $7,000 per day in fines.

GM will pay more than $420,000 in cumulative fines for not meeting NHTSA’s April 3 deadline to answer 107 detailed questions about its recall. That’s in addition to a $35 million fine that GM agreed to pay May 16 for delaying the defective ignition switch recall for a decade.

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Rosemarie Noto’s daughter suffered for 1 1/2 years because of a medical testing error that could have been prevented. A Johns Hopkins study found that her experience is not unusual; diagnostic errors such as these cause billions in malpractice claim payouts and pose a significant patient safety risk in the United States.

“This is more evidence that diagnostic errors could easily be the biggest patient safety and medical malpractice problem in the United States,” says Dr. David E. Newman-Toker, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study published online in BMJ Quality and Safety. “There’s a lot more harm associated with diagnostic errors than we imagined.”

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DETROIT — To the legal department at General Motors, secrecy ruled.

Employees were discouraged from taking notes in meetings. Workers’ emails were examined once a year for sensitive information that might be used against the company. G.M. lawyers even kept their knowledge of fatal accidents related to a defective ignition switch from their own boss, the company’s general counsel, Michael P. Millikin.

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A day after issuing a scathing report on safety shortcomings, General Motors announced four more recalls, three of them involving air bags that may not deploy in a crash.

With the latest four, GM has now had 34 recalls so far this year that have involved 13.9 million vehicles in the U.S. CEO Mary Barra is pressing the company to carefully sort through any lingering questions about safety in its vehicles, an outgrowth of the ignition switch recall in Chevrolet Cobalts and other compact cars that are being blamed for 13 deaths.

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Of all the problems haunting General Motors Co. over its handling of defective ignition switches, the one with plaintiffs' lawyers is just beginning.

The company's size and self-confessed failures in an internal report released last week are attracting lawyers who forged some of the biggest civil settlements ever, from the landmark tobacco litigation to the Exxon Valdez disaster to Toyota Motor Corp.'s unintended-acceleration problems.

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A $100 million settlement involving NuvaRing, a birth-control device linked to sometimes-fatal side effects, will stand now that the vast majority of claimants have chosen to opt into the agreement, those involved in the lawsuits said Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel of St. Louis approved the settlement in February, but NuvaRing maker Merck & Co. had the right to abandon the deal if less than 95 percent of eligible claimants opted in.

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The Food and Drug Administration has issued the strongest warning it can about tanning beds. The message it has for parents, don't let your young children use them.

The FDA issued a black-box warning, its strongest warning, saying children under 18 should not use tanning beds because they emit radiation that may cause skin cancer.

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A sweeping internal investigation of General Motors released on Thursday condemned the company for its decade-long failure to fix a deadly safety defect, one that led to “devastating consequences,” including at least 13 deaths.

The report, written by the former United States attorney Anton R. Valukas, set off the dismissal of 15 G.M. employees, including a vice president for regulatory affairs and a senior lawyer responsible for product liability cases, and forced broad changes in how the company handles vehicle safety.

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General Motors on Thursday will release the results of its three-month internal investigation into the events leading up to this year’s recall of 2.6 million small cars with defective ignition switches.

The inquiry, conducted by Anton R. Valukas, a former United States attorney, is expected to name the people and departments within G.M. that he believes were responsible for the long delay leading up to the recall. Mr. Valukas may also recommend personnel changes or other corporate measures.

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