Imagine that you are driving your Saturn on a rural road. You lose control and cannot steer the car. It goes straight even though you try to turn the wheel, ultimately slamming into a tree. The airbags don’t inflate even though it’s a front-end crash. You are badly hurt and your passenger doesn’t make it. You’re stuck in the car, bloody and crying, until an hour later, a passerby hears you and stops.
You’re understandably hysterical but understand what has happened.
Now imagine that you are charged with a crime—intoxicated manslaughter—for the death of your passenger, who was your boyfriend. You’re confused and frustrated because you didn’t think you did anything wrong. Your heart is broken. People are mad at you. And you lost your best friend, too.
You are indicted and eventually decide to plead guilty to a lesser criminal charge, unsure of what to do. After all, you had a trace of Xanax in your blood at the time of the crash, and neither of you were wearing your seat belts. You can’t remember the circumstances surrounding the crash. You must have been at fault somehow, you suppose, and you want desperately to put this all behind you.
Fast forward 10 years. You’ve served five years of probation and paid a fine, and your parents had to pay for your lawyer. You’ve struggled to put the crash and all of your losses behind you. GM issues a recall of millions of vehicles, including the Saturn you were driving when you wrecked and your boyfriend was killed.
A trooper who investigated the accident concedes that “had he known about the ignition flaw, ‘in essence that would change everything.’” When the crash occurred, he had noted that because there were no skid marks, you had not tried to avoid the wreck. As a result, he blamed you for the wreck, reporting that you were “intoxicated.”
All of this could have been avoided if GM, the company that manufactured your car, would have acted responsibly by not sending a car to production with a defective ignition switch. While driving, your car switched itself out of the “run” position, depriving you of proper control over steering and braking and causing the airbags to fail.
As reported by the New York Times, this horrible situation was no imaginary circumstance for Candice Anderson of Texas.
If you or someone you love was impacted by a faulty GM switch, you may be able to sue even if the accident occurred years ago. A recent court decision has opened the door for lawsuits resulting from the defective switches because GM failed to disclose the problem in its 2009 bankruptcy proceedings. Delay can hurt your case, so call today.
At the Alexander Law Group, LLP, we believe that companies who keep churning out unsafe products should be held accountable for the injuries and grief they cause. Contact us today. We will work with you to obtain unmatched results and to defend your interests. That’s what we do.
