Boston, MA 10/15/2014 (wallstreetpr) – General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is still reviewing nearly 151 fatality claims due to the ignition switch issue. The ignition switch problem resulted in a record number of recall of vehicles in the current year forcing it provide hefty charges that dragged its profit. While the recall of vehicles seemed to be over, the process of settling the claims are going on, with no specific date fixed to complete it.
Death Claim Approval
Kenneth Feinberg has been hired by General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) to look into the claims made by the affected people due to ignition switch issue. His approval of death claims relating to the issue increased to 27.
Significantly, Feinberg would deal with the claims recorded between August 1 and December 31 in the current year. He would be updating the report on the claims of death every Monday. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) has selected eminent jury Feinberg in view of his experience in handling the issue of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and awarding compensation claims for the 9/11 victims.
So far, 1,371 claims were received by the office of Feinberg. It included injury claims from 1,193 people. However, he could find that only 25 claims of the non-fatal injury were valid. He clarified that the processing would take 90 days for clear-cut claims, and for the ambiguous cases, it would take 180 days to process the claims.
Expect Charges
General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) has earlier indicated that it expects to incur $400 – $600 million as charges towards compensation program of the ignition switch issue. However, there was no guarantee that the final amount would remain within the range. There was every chance of the costs increasing since Feinberg has not confirmed any clear-cut range of the compensation amount.
General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) had to bear the brunt of the ignition switch problem. It has recalled over 2.6 million vehicles in the current year. Though the issue was identified in 2001, it started recalling the vehicles only in February this year. The recalled vehicles included Saturn Ions and Chevrolet Cobalts.
