(30 Jun 2014) A US lawyer overseeing General Motors' compensation to victims of small-car crashes said on Monday there's no limit to what the company will pay, provided the crashes were caused by faulty ignition switches.
Kenneth Feinberg, one of top compensation experts in the United States, said that GM has placed no cap on the total amount he can pay to injured people or relatives of those killed.
And he alone - not GM - will decide how much they each will get, even though he is being paid by the company, which did not like some of the programmes provisions.
GM links 13 deaths to a defective ignition switch in cars such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, but trial lawyers and lawmakers say claims of wrongful death and injury could run in the hundreds.
Feinberg would not estimate the ultimate cost for GM, saying he has no idea how many claims will be made.
With the plan, GM is trying to limit its legal liabilities, control the damage to its image and eventually move beyond the crisis caused by its failure to correct the ignition-switch problem for more than a decade, even as it learned of fatal crashes.
Only those hurt in crashes caused by the small-car ignition switches are eligible, so the programme excludes other GM safety problems, which worsened on Monday when the carmaker added 8.2 million vehicles to its huge list of cars recalled over faulty ignition switches.
The latest recalls involve mainly older small cars and bring GM's total number of recalls this year to over 28 million.
Laura Christian, who lost her daughter in a 2005 accident, called for legislation that will prevent such incidents from happening again.
GM said in a statement that Feinberg's plan shows it is taking responsibility for what happened to victims.

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