GM cleared in second verdict over crash blamed on ignition switch

General Motors Co.’s victory in a Houston courtroom Thursday makes the carmaker three for three in trials related to an ignition-switch defect, but its legal entanglements may stretch on for years. Mr. Stevens suffered from brain injuries and was charged for manslaughter.

Stevens’ lawyer said his client lost power steering and power brakes when his ignition switch jiggled off, causing him to smash into the oncoming truck at an oblique frontal angle that should have triggered the air bags. GM says it has fixed the problem.

“This accident has nothing to do with an ignition switch”, Brock said.

“I’d like to see what happens in a very solid case with very experienced lawyers, ” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He had asked jurors to award the Stevens family more than $14.5 million.

Flaws like that mean GM’s three wins so far won’t have much effect on the claims remaining, said plaintiff’s attorney Bob Langdon, who represents multiple accident victims suing the automaker. “As a result, an innocent man was killed”.

Jim Cain, the quoted GM spokesperson, underlined the fact that the incident had nothing to do with the ignition switch recall made by the American corporation.

Stevens, who was 19 at the time, had been driving westbound on a road northeast of Houston near the town of New Caney when he lost control of his vehicle, according to his attorneys. Stevens’ auto hit a guardrail and went into the eastbound lane, where it struck a vehicle driven by Mariano Landaverde, who died at the scene. Landaverde’s family had also been part of the lawsuit but settled out of court with GM.

In 2011, Zach Stevens lost control of his Saturn Sky and smashed into another auto, killing the driver. The recall, which covers 1.4 million vehicles dating to the 1997 model year, is needed because repairs from the first two didn’t work.

Meanwhile, a NY federal judge overseeing a number of trials over GM’s ignition-switch defect said “New” GM can retry the question of whether “Old” GM should have known about the defect before its 2009 bankruptcy. In March, a NY jury found that an ignition switch was not to blame in a 2014 accident on an icy New Orleans bridge.

The third case against GM outside of the class-action shareholder’s lawsuit and the settlement already established by the company is considered a one of the “bellwethers” for this situation.