G.M. Lawyers Central In Risk Management Failures

A report on General Motors vehicles with faulty ignition switches detailed how, over more than a decade, numerous lawyers with knowledge of the defect failed to take actions that would have prevented their client from sending potentially dangerous cars out on the road. According to the New York Times, coming congressional hearings will focus on the role of lawyers – three of whom have been fired – in the company’s ten-year tap-dance around a car defect that eventually led to at least 13 deaths. “The company’s lawyers appear to have viewed their obligation to only deal with the incidents immediately demanding their attention, thereby failing to notice the pattern of problems,” Peter J. Henning writes in the Times’ Dealbook. “Each piece of litigation was evaluated solely on the question of how much the company might have to pay, without any regard to the broader issue of whether there was a systemic failure in one of its products.”