August 21, 2024
A proposed class of car buyers is urging a Michigan federal court not to dismiss their suit claiming General Motors sold vehicles with defective transmissions, saying the automaker hid the defect, so they couldn’t have discovered it until recently.
In a brief filed Tuesday, the buyers, led by Cole Ulrich, said General Motors LLC affirmatively hid the problems with its eight-speed transmission by publishing “evolving” technical service bulletins instructing its repair shops to tell car owners that the symptoms of the defect were “normal” or to do ineffectual repairs.
Ulrich argued that these tactics delayed the discovery of the defect despite their due diligence, as the representations made by repair technicians obfuscated their existence so that GM could induce them not to pursue claims.
Because the repairs did not address the defects or tell the plaintiffs that there was in fact a defect, GM cannot argue now that the claims came too late, according to the brief. The plaintiffs further argue that GM knew that one of the defects, described as “harsh shift,” could not be fixed. It began redesigning the transmission entirely to address it but still hid its existence and told its technicians to do nothing about it, they said.
The plaintiffs further argued that no information was publicly disclosed about the redesign until 2023, and no information about attempts to correct defective transmission fluid was disclosed until 2019, after their purchases.
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Theodore Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the plaintiffs, said Wednesday, “We believe the facts and law support that the Court deny the motion to dismiss as it did with the other 26 states previously, and that these customers get a chance to certify their claims as a class.”
Read Car Buyers Say Claims Are Tolled Because GM Hid Defects.