GM Ignition Switch Attorney Fees Reallocated for Three Firms

Three law firms that represented consumers in a class settlement over allegedly defective General Motors LLC ignition switches will get about $200,000 more than initially allocated to them after a federal court in New York approved an agreement among class counsel.

Two large firms acting as lead class counsel for the consumers who settled with GM over economic loss, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, will take the hit so that other attorneys won’t be affected, according to the proposal approved May 28 by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The $120 million settlement, approved in December 2020, encompasses about 100 class actions for economic loss involving millions of recalled vehicles.

Judge Jesse M. Furman earlier said class counsel needed to work on the allocation proposal for the $24.6 million in fees to address the three firms’ objections that the plan failed to credit them for many hours of work.

Furman overruled other objections related to the plan, which squeezes many firms due to a shortfall in fees from the $120 million settlement.

Class counsel told the court that its “rulings and assistance on the first two sets of objections provided an avenue to resolve the Objectors’ third set of objections.”

They said they had agreed to credit all the time and costs submitted by the three firms, Golenbock Eiseman Assor Bell & Peskoe LLP; Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP; and Gary Peller of Georgetown Law and associated counsel.

The multidistrict litigation also includes individual personal injury and wrongful death suits, many of which have settled under confidential terms in recent months, according to the court’s docket.

The first recalls—for ignition switches that could get jostled into the “off” position, causing stalls and air-bag failures—began in February 2014. Recalls that carried over into the next year affected millions of vehicles. More than 100 crash deaths have been linked to the faulty switches.

The economic loss suits concerned seven recalls of pre-bankruptcy GM vehicles, according to an earlier ruling of the court: five over ignition switches, key rotation, or ignition-related knee bumps; one over side airbags; and one over power steering.

The case is In re Gen. Motors LLC Ignition Switch Litig., S.D.N.Y., No. 1:14-md-02543, 5/28/21.