General Motors, the country’s largest automaker, settled a wrongful death case that was scheduled for trial next month in the U.S. District Court in New York, as part of ongoing litigation involving its defective ignition switches.
The company has admitted that for a decade it failed to disclose the defective switch in millions of small vehicles.
The case was settled with a wife whose husband died in a 2013 collision while in a Saturn Ion equipped with a defective ignition. The lawsuit claimed that the fatal crash was caused by an ignition defect, that shut off the car’s engine and disabled its airbags. The settlement terms were confidential.
The case was one of about 235 injury and wrongful death cases pending in state and federal courts.
General Motors has paid about $600 million to settle 399 ignition switch claims, including 124 death cases. It has also paid another $275 million to settle an additional 1,385 death and injury claims.