GM Instrument Cluster Settlement

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The GM Instrument Cluster Settlement was a 2008 class action settlement awarded to owners of certain General Motors vehicles with allegedly defective speedometers. The settlement allows the owner or lessee to get their instrument cluster replaced under the terms of a special coverage adjustment to their factory standard warranty.

A class action, also known as a class action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.

Speedometer

A speedometer or a speed meter is a gauge that measures and displays the instantaneous speed of a vehicle. Now universally fitted to motor vehicles, they started to be available as options in the 1900s, and as standard equipment from about 1910 onwards. Speedometers for other vehicles have specific names and use other means of sensing speed. For a boat, this is a pit log. For an aircraft, this is an airspeed indicator.

In contract law, a warranty is a promise which is not a condition of the contract or an innominate term: (1) it is a term "not going to the root of the contract", and (2) which only entitles the innocent party to damages if it is breached: i.e. the warranty is not true or the defaulting party does not perform the contract in accordance with the terms of the warranty. A warranty is not guarantee. It is a mere promise. It may be enforced if it is breached by an award for the legal remedy of damages.

Contents

Background

As early as 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had received complaints concerning erratic speedometer and gauge readings from numerous makes and models of GM vehicles. [1] No deaths or injuries were ever attributed to the erratic gauges, but owners of the vehicles felt the problem was a safety concern.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration American agency of the Executive Branch of the Department of Transportation

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as "Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes."

In 2007, Kevin Zwicker filed suit against General Motors in U.S. District Court in Seattle seeking three types of compensation: [2]

  1. Replacement of all speedometers on the affected models
  2. Reimbursement for anyone who already paid to have a defective speedometer replaced
  3. Reimbursement for anyone who paid speeding tickets and whose auto insurance rates rose due to a defective speedometer

John Hall filed a nearly identical suit in U.S. District Court in Oregon after paying the out of warranty repair cost to replace the instrument cluster in his 2003 GMC Envoy LE. Both Zwicker and Hall were represented by Beth Terrell, an attorney with the Seattle law firm of Tousley Brain Stephens. [2]

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who decided to certify the lawsuit as a class-action.

John C. Coughenour is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. Before being appointed as a judge, Coughenour was a leading litigator with Bogle and Gates and has taught trial and appellate practice at the University of Washington School of Law.

Terms

Owners who paid for repairs to the speedometer before the class action settlement are eligible for reimbursement under the following terms:

Vehicles covered (made 2000 to 2007)

See also

When a person makes a claim for personal injury damages that have resulted from the presence of a defective automobile or component of an automobile, that person asserts a product liability claim. That claim may be against the automobile's manufacturer, the manufacturer of a component part or system, or both, as well as potentially being raised against companies that distributed, sold or installed the part or system that is alleged to be defective.

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