Voyage of the Damned: GM Tort Claimants' Opening Appellate Brief

What started out a couple months ago as a “ Slow Boat to China,” today feels more like the Voyage of the Damned. Yesterday I filed this “ Opening Brief” (plus the Sale Opinion at Appendix A and the Sale Order and MPA at Appendix B) on behalf of my five clients in our appeal of the GM Sale Order: Callan Campbell, et al., v. Motors Liquidation Company, Case No. 09-6818 (NRB) (S.D.N.Y.). This appeal is the only one pending that challenges the abhorrent treatment of preexisting products liability claims in either the GM or Chrysler bankruptcy cases. When I first got involved in the case three months ago, I summarized here the injuries and the myriad adversities faced by my clients on a daily basis. I wrote: “The sad, and all too tragic, stories of my clients, taken from the filed objection, are set forth below. The only thing my clients did wrong here was buy a GM car. For this act of brand loyalty, they have paid dearly. It’s not enough that people lose their lives and get severely injured from design defects and product flaws, now they and their loved ones get thrown under the bus!”

Having now lived with GM for about 450 hours the past three months, I have to say I’m thoroughly appalled at the cold-hearted stinginess of those calling the shots at GM and Chrysler. They have left helpless accident victims hanging out to dry for reasons I cannot fathom, while otherwise spending “whatever it takes” — to whomever it takes — “to get the ‘deal’ done.” (See Opening Brief, at p.7).

With the US Treasury paying a mind-boggling $92 billion for most of “Old GM” (see Opening Brief, at p.7 fn.4), would it really be such a burden for the Secretary and his Boss to set aside another $250 million or so (or about 1/4% of the total consideration paid in the deal) to make sure there’s a small, but adequate, reserve to cover medical bills, assisted care, and other basic requirements of those (see, e.g., here, here, and Callan Campbell here) severely injured by the design defects built into cars manufactured by the same plants they’re now the stewards of? (See Opening Brief at p.8 fn.6, estimating total remaining products claims left behind at $233.2 million).

Put another way, imagine you’ve got $92.00 in quarters in a big bucket. Now imagine that you can dramatically change for the better the lives of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people your own mirror-image predecessor destroyed through no fault of their own. And imagine further that all you have to do to achieve that wonderful act of kind-heartedness is to take just one of those 368 quarters and put it aside for the benefit of those whose lives have been damned as a result of mistakes made by some of the people and property you just bought — and now control — for those 368 quarters.

That’s all that needs to be done in GM to make things right, and my guess is that only about a dime needs to be put aside to cover the outstanding products liability claims left to rot in Chrysler. But no one seems to have the political or moral compunction to wrestle those thirty-five cents from the Boss’s own clenched fist.

“Sad” and “pathetic” are the first words that come to mind as I ponder the fact that I’m not on the “ Slow Boat to China,” but on the Voyage of the Damned (Art Spiegelman’s take on it).

• Brother, can you spare a dime? (classic Bing Crosby)
• or sung by Allison Moorer (great soul)
• or by the Gas House Gang Barbershop Quartet (great harmony; my favorite of the 4)
• or instrumentalized by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (for jazz buffs)

[Courtesy of bankruptcylitigationblog.com]