General Motors‘The lawsuit against FCA is dead in the water again, after a U.S. district court judge denied GM’s attempt to return the suit Friday, though GM plans not to let it go without a fight.
This rumor all started in November 2019 when GM filed a lawsuit claiming that FCA UAW officials were fined for making deals that gave FCA a competitive advantage. GM demanded damages in the billions of dollars. Then in June, U.S. District Judge Paul Borman went on a rant calling the suit “.a waste of time and resources“Especially in the face of the nation’s multiple struggles, and ordered GM CEO Mary Barra and FCA CEO Mike Manley to meet to person find a resolution. That did not happen. Instead, GM tried to get the judge and threw out his utterance. GM did not come to mind yet and Judge Borman remained on the case. He then throws the whole thing out in July because GM did not have enough evidence to prove that FCA was trying to harm its competitor. GM changed the case with new evidence, but it made no impression on Judge Borman who GM denied again today. Of the Detroit Free Press:
U.S. District Judge Paul Borman on Friday gave an order, saying the court did not wrong him in his previous actions and that GM’s newly discovered evidence is too speculative to warrant a retrial.
Borman said in his order that GM’s new evidence “does not make it a reasonable conclusion that FCA bribes individuals to infiltrate GM as part of a scheme to do direct harm to GM, and therefore does not change the conclusion that GM’s alleged injuries do not were proactively caused by the alleged RICO violations of FCA, ”a reference to the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Of course, GM intends to make an appeal. The new evidence quoted in Borman’s statement came out Monday and is pretty cinematic stuff. From the Freep:
FCA had previously dismissed GM’s efforts as “despicable”, saying its proposed amended complaint “reads like a script of a third-class spy film, full of unspoken accusations.”
GM, which had hired investigators, said it had found new evidence of offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and other countries designed to fuel a bribery scheme to harm GM and also demanded former GM board member Joe Ashton, who is awaiting sentencing in the UAW corruption probe, was actually a paid mole.
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FCA, for its part, says this whole lawsuit is a ploy to suspend its merger with the French automaker PSA Group, which includes brands such as Peugeot and Citroën. Both companies are likely to continue throwing money in the trash at this endless affair for the foreseeable future. At least Judge Borman once told her ‘no’.
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