People following the GM Recall saga may not be aware that the ensuing litigation includes three different types of cases.

The first group of lawsuits centers on personal injury, when someone driving or riding in a General Motors vehicle, or a driver or passenger in another vehicle that collides with a GM vehicle, is harmed as a result of a product defect. For example, many individuals are claiming to have been injured when ignition switches on various GM cars failed, cutting or interrupting power to other systems, and rendering air bags, power brakes, and power steering inoperable. If someone died as a consequence of the defect, the decedent’s surviving family members can sue for the loss of a loved one, and those cases are called wrongful death actions. Sommers Schwartz attorneys Samuel Meklir and Jason Thompson are accepting these types of personal injury cases for litigation or submission to the official GM Ignition Compensation Claims Resolution Fund.

The second group of actions involves securities issues in which shareholders of the “new General Motors” (successor to the pre-bankruptcy “old General Motors”) are suing the company to recover monies they paid for allegedly inflated GM stock. These cases depend on the shareholders establishing that GM withheld information from the marketplace, which if known would have reduced the value of their stock. Sommers Schwartz partner Andrew Kochanowski is representing shareholders in a case called In Re General Motors Company Shareholder Derivative Litigation, which is pending in Wayne County, Michigan Circuit Court.

The third group of lawsuits involves economic loss based on fraud and misrepresentation. In these cases, owners of GM vehicles have sued for the decrease in their vehicles’ values due to the defective part along with the adverse impact that the massive GM recall has had on vehicle market values. Sommers Schwartz is also representing people in a class action case – Johnson et al. v. General Motors, LLC (currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York after being transferred from a federal court in the Southern District of Mississippi).

If you or a someone close to you has been physically injured as a result of a defective General Motors vehicle, or financially impacted from the GM’s sweeping recall campaign, please contact Sommers Schwartz today to learn more about what we’re doing to fight for people just like you.

Jason J. Thompson

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Jason J. Thompson

Jason Thompson is a nationally board certified trial attorney and co-chairs Sommers Schwartz’s Complex Litigation Department. He has a formidable breadth of litigation experience, including class action and multidistrict litigation (MDL), and practices nationwide in both state and federal courts.

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