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Why General Motors is Asking the Supreme Court to Say It's Only 7 Years Old

posted by Fnord666 on Monday December 19 2016, @12:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-not-how-reincarnation-works dept.

charon writes:

When a company reorganizes itself through a bankruptcy, is it the same company? And if so, is it liable for alleged wrongdoing committed by the previous version of itself?

These are questions raised by General Motors' efforts to dodge hundreds of lawsuits related to a potentially fatal ignition-switch flaw in millions of its older sedans. After receiving a stinging defeat in a federal appellate court this past summer, the automaker is now making a Hail Mary pass to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to convince judges that it has reincarnated into a seven-year-old car company free of liabilities from its previous life.

With potentially billions of dollars' worth of personal and financial injury claims at stake, the Detroit automaker's lawyers argue that allowing these lawsuits to go through would undermine an important aspect of corporate bankruptcy: giving assurance to the buyers of troubled companies that they aren't also buying a whole bunch of unexpected legal headaches.

But in GM's case there was no outside buyer. It essentially bought itself (with taxpayer money) in the wake of the mortgage-lending crisis that tipped the nation into recession and steered the American auto industry into a ditch.

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @02:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @02:33PM (#443133)

    I mean people must be fairly desperate to vote for somebody like Drumpf. This neverending too-big-to-fail bullshit could be the last straw.

    Sharpen your pitchforks! Get your torches ready!

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by butthurt on Monday December 19 2016, @03:31PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Monday December 19 2016, @03:31PM (#443155) Journal

    We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

    --Network

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:44PM (#443317)

      I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!