GM agrees to settle coolant lawsuits
General Motors Corp. has agreed to settle a series of class-action lawsuits claiming a faulty engine coolant damaged thousands of customer vehicles.
Under the settlement, GM would reimburse class members between $50 and $800 for repairs linked to Dex-Cool, an orange coolant that GM included in cars and trucks beginning in 1995.
The total cost to GM will depend on the number of customers claiming damages, but the plaintiffs’ attorneys estimate the settlement could cover up to 20 million initial and secondary buyers of GM vehicles that used Dex-Cool.
They also say the price tag could reach the hundreds of millions of dollars.
A California state court gave preliminary approval to the settlement last week and a Missouri court plans to consider it Friday.
“We fought for about five years to recover monetary damages for people that would be meaningful and I think we achieved that,” said San Francisco plaintiff attorney Eric Gibbs, who estimated most people spent between $600 and $900 for repairs.
GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said the firm was not admitting any wrongdoing but was settling the case to cut down on legal bills. “Our experience with Dex-Cool is that when the cooling system is kept full and properly maintained, we haven’t seen any problems,” he said. “These kinds of things appear to be issues of low coolant, which isn’t unusual with high-mileage vehicles, so we decided to agree to the settlement.”
GM owners have filed a dozen breach-of-warranty lawsuits in state and federal courts across the country, including California and Missouri, where one of the earliest cases was filed in April 2003.
The cases claim that Dex-Cool often damaged the engines or created a rusty sludge in the radiators that caused the vehicles to overheat. Under the agreement, GM will reimburse some of the cost for intake manifold gasket replacements, cooling system flushes and heater core repairs sought during the first seven years or 150,000 miles, whichever came first, that the class member owned the vehicle.
Considering that some vehicles may have been sold and the new owners also paid for repairs alleged to have been caused by Dex-Cool, individual vehicles may generate more than one settlement.
The settlement covers GM vehicles with 3.1-liter or 3.4-liter V6 engines for model years 1995 to 2003, those same brands with 3.8-liter V6 engines for model years 1995 to 2004, and small trucks and sport utility vehicles with 4.3-liter V6 engines for model years 1995 through 2000.
Additional details are available at www.girardgibbs.com/ dexcool.html and www.dexcool settlement.com.
