Cobalt Cover-Up: The Inside Story of a Deadly Conspiracy at the Largest Car Manufacturer in the World

PROLOGUE

Divine appointments rarely announce their arrival ahead of time. Only in retrospect do we see defining moments. Luke 17:10 says, So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done’ (NASB).

I think of that verse a lot when I look back on the first time Ken and Beth Melton walked into my cramped office in Marietta, Georgia. More than a year passed before I grasped the magnitude of their case. Even more time went by before I understood its implications went far beyond a lawsuit. The importance of this case came not through the size of the settlement or even the headlines generated.

Psalm 103:6 says, The LORD gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly (NLT). Treated unfairly grossly understates what happened to Ken and Beth’s daughter Brooke at the hands of a corporation that placed profit before people’s lives and then did its best to keep the truth from ever seeing the light of day.

Jesus said a day is coming when he will make sure secrets whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear (Luke 12:3 NLT). Little did I know when I first met Ken and Beth Melton that God would use this case as his megaphone to do just that. So many coincidences had to fall into place for this case to reach its result, so many ifs had to come together that only God could have orchestrated the chain of events which started with that first meeting. If an insurance company had come to a timely settlement with accident victims, and if a lawsuit had not been threatened (yet never filed), and if an inspection of a vehicle had not been requested, and if someone had not referred Ken and Beth to me, and if and if and if, then the truth never would have come to light of how General Motors chose to risk people’s lives rather than spend less than a dollar per car to fix a defect they covered up for more than a decade.

I cannot take credit for being the one who finally discovered the Cobalt cover-up. God’s hand of providence directed me down this path. The God of justice used Brooke Melton’s case to produce answers not only for her mom and dad but for all the families who’d suffered a similar loss. I just happened to be the one God chose to be the catalyst for bringing this massive corporate fraud to light. I thank him that he did.

CHAPTER 1

The Nightmare That Refused to End

Ken and Beth Melton had the look of two people who wished they were anywhere else when they walked into my office for the first time on February 8, 2011. As a trial lawyer who represents clients in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, I see that look often. I never get used to it. The day I do is the day I need to change careers.

Is that your family? Beth asked as she and Ken took their seats across from me. Photographs of my wife and children covered the wall behind me.

Yes. That’s my wife, Sonja, and our five kids, Rachel, Rebekah, Michelle, Asa, and Aaron, I replied.

They’re lovely, Beth said.

Thank you, I said. They keep me busy.

I know how that can be, Ken replied. We have, uh, had, two daughters. Our oldest . . . He couldn’t finish the sentence.

Why don’t you tell me about her, I said, trying to ease the moment.

Brooke was twenty-nine when she . . . at the time of her accident, Ken said. We were so proud of her. She was a nurse over at West Atlanta Pediatrics. Very independent, but you know, still a daddy’s girl. Made all her own decisions, but she’d call me for advice sometimes on dad things, like repairs to her apartment or her car. He paused.

My girls do the same thing, I said. You want them to be independent, but it feels good when they call and need you. I am very sorry for the loss of your daughter. If you can, will you tell me what happened the night of Brooke’s crash?

Ken gathered himself. Nearly a year had passed, but his and Beth’s grief still felt raw. Ken seemed more agitated, like talking helped him work through what he was feeling. Beth settled back into her chair, quiet, like she could hardly bear to revisit her daughter’s death even though she knew she had to.

Ken handed me a document. This is a copy of the police report, he said. I looked it over as he continued, It was her birthday, March 10, last year. She had a date with her boyfriend after she got off work. It had rained pretty much all day, but it had slowed down a lot by the time she got off work that night. So Brooke was driving her Cobalt down Highway 92, a two-lane road, when she lost control of her car as she came down a hill. Her car began sliding and crossed over into the other lane, where the oncoming car struck her on the passenger side. Her car then went off the road and down into a creek by the side of the road. By the time the hospital called us, Brooke was . . . she was, uh . . . she was already gone.

I am so sorry, I said. Those words never seem to be enough. Even though I’ve worked with many grieving parents, going back to the first case I ever took to trial, I had no idea what the Meltons were experiencing. Even so, sitting with them, listening to their story, I could not help but put myself in their shoes and wonder what I would do if the hospital called to tell me my oldest child had been lost in an accident. I do not know how parents move forward with life after that. I am always amazed that they do.

I scanned the police report. Under Cause of Accident were the words Driver error: Driving too fast for conditions.

I didn’t believe the report’s conclusion then and I still don’t now, Ken continued. It says the wreck was Brooke’s fault. I don’t buy that. Brooke was a very cautious driver. She’d never had an accident before. Never even gotten a ticket. It’s not like her to take unnecessary chances. I know it rained that day, but witnesses said it was only a drizzle at the time of the accident. And it’s not like she had never driven in the rain before. Ken’s emotion stopped his words. I glanced over at Beth. She tried hard to keep her emotions in check but was losing that fight.

And you are here because your insurance company now wants to inspect the Cobalt? I asked.

Yes, Ken said. Officially the wreck was Brooke’s fault, but within a few weeks after her death, we received a recall notice from GM. Ken handed me the recall notice. It was for the electronic power steering on Brooke’s Cobalt.

If the power steering went out, wouldn’t that be enough to make someone lose control of their car? Ken asked.

I read the notice before I answered his question. A couple of sentences jumped out at me. At the bottom of the first paragraph, I read, "If power steering assist is lost, it may require greater driver effort at low vehicle speeds, for example, below 15 mph (25 km/h). Unless the driver compensates for this additional effort, it may increase the risk of a crash" (emphasis added). This mixed message caught my eye. The problem was supposed to manifest itself only at low speeds, and yet it also said it could contribute to a crash. Low speeds and accidents do not go together. I’d read enough of these notices to know there may well be more to this than met the eye.

I’m not a mechanic, but I agree it may be a question worth looking into, I said. To your knowledge, had she ever had any problems with her power steering before?

No. But the recall makes it sound like this is something that just happens out of the blue, Ken said. He added, Shortly after we received the recall notice, we called the adjuster for our insurance company, Allstate. We thought GM should be notified to look into whether the recall had something to do with Brooke’s crash. The adjuster said he would contact GM. However, we did not hear back from him for months.

Beth interjected, In the meantime, we began receiving letters from the attorney for the people who were in the car that hit Brooke’s car. They had been injured and the attorney wanted information from us about the Cobalt. It was very stressful, and frankly, I was hoping we could be left alone with our grief. Ken, however, was determined to figure out why this had happened. He spent a lot of time on the internet researching Cobalts and learned there were lots of complaints, including the power steering complaints. Although I understood why Ken was doing what he was doing, I did not believe it would lead to anything. We were both dealing with our grief in our own way.

Ken said, Just last week we got a call from the insurance adjuster saying that he was scheduling an inspection. After his call, we didn’t know what to do. Beth and I talked and weren’t sure whether we needed to be at the inspection. We assumed we did. So I called the adjuster back and he said we should probably talk to a lawyer about what to do. I told him I don’t know any lawyers, and that is when he told us to call Lance Cooper. The adjuster apparently just lost a case against you and said you might be able to help us.

The inspection of Brooke’s Cobalt that Allstate has requested, Ken continued with a tone that told me he’d been waiting to talk to someone about this, what are they looking for?

I explained how at this stage the insurance company does a visual inspection as part of their due diligence, to see if anything in the car might have contributed to the accident beyond what is already noted in the police report. After looking over the report, I doubted there was anything more than met the eye. In my experience, police investigating fatal accidents try to leave no stone unturned. Usually their conclusions are spot-on. Thus far, I had no reason to expect anything different.

You mean like a manufacturing defect? Ken asked.

That’s part of it, I said. Really they’re just looking for anything beyond driver error that could have caused Brooke to lose control of her car. Since the people in the car who hit Brooke were injured, they probably want Allstate to pay their claims. If Allstate can find someone other than Brooke to blame, they could refuse to pay. The people doing the inspection will not dismantle anything. This is strictly a visual inspection. Normally, the manufacturer, which in this case is General Motors, will need to have someone there as well. If your insurance company hasn’t contacted them, I can do that.

I continued, If you would like, I can make sure your interests are protected by having someone attend the inspection on your behalf. I made this offer even though I normally only represent individuals and families who have been harmed by defective products. Considering what Ken and Beth had already been through, I thought I could at least help them with the vehicle inspection process and make sure Allstate protected them.

I knew King and Spalding, a global law firm with a local Atlanta office, represented General Motors within the state of Georgia and would want to be at this inspection. I had a good relationship with Harold Franklin, a partner who handled GM cases. This wasn’t my first case involving GM. Harold and I had squared off several times. The two of us had a good professional relationship. While we didn’t have the kind of relationship where we’d go to a Braves game together, I knew Harold a bit more personally than any other defense lawyer, having seen him at prayer breakfasts in the past. Calling Harold to alert him to any inspection of Brooke’s car was more than a professional courtesy, however. If inspectors did happen to find something, we needed someone representing GM on-site to verify we had not tampered with possible evidence in case of a lawsuit. I did not anticipate this case going that far.

While my offer seemed to set Beth at ease, Ken clearly had more on his mind.

Is there anything else? I asked.

Yes, Ken said. Brooke’s car had been in a repair shop the day before the accident. She took it in because it stalled while she was driving through a neighborhood. The engine just quit running, although it started right back up. I told her she needed to take it in to the shop right away. The next day I even followed her to the shop where she had most of her work done, Thornton Chevrolet, just in case her car died on her again.

What did they do to her car to fix it? I asked.

Ken explained how the dealership cleaned the fuel injectors and replaced the fuel filter. Thornton also recommended the shifter assembly be replaced because GM had issued a service bulletin concerning the shifter. Service bulletins are issued for performance issues rather than safety problems. It was going to cost her another $350, so I told her she should get a second opinion before she spent that kind of money, since she’d never had any problems with the shifter before, Ken said. When she picked up the car, they assured her that they had fixed the stalling problem.

He paused. The day after she picked the car up from the dealership, she, uh— Ken could hardly get the words out. She lost control of it and died. He dropped his head and appeared to be fighting back tears.

Grief is hard enough to survive. Wondering if you gave your child advice which may have had tragic consequences might make it impossible to bear.

I just want to know what really happened, Ken said. There was a tremor in his voice.

While I sympathized with Ken, it was hard to dismiss the official explanation that this was a tragic case of driver error. At this point, I had committed only to help walk them through the vehicle inspection process and make sure Allstate protected their interests. However, if I started digging into the recall notice and the work done on Brooke’s car right before her accident, I’d soon be pulled into doing much more. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.

The timing of the Melton case wasn’t ideal for me from professional and personal standpoints. After an eight- or nine-year run of successful results in cases, I lost three very large cases between 2006 and 2009. Because I represent people bringing a lawsuit involving faulty products, I do not receive a fee unless I win the case. Our firm also covers all of the cost of investigating, filing, and seeing through to completion every case I take. On average, those costs run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes as high as half a million for some cases. The three cases I lost in a row were all expensive cases. I went more than a year without getting paid, and my firm ended up close to two million dollars in debt. My wife had to make arrangements with our mortgage company to keep us in our house. On top of that, all three cases involved automobile manufacturers. In the year immediately before the Meltons’ visit, our firm had managed to turn things around and get back on reasonably solid financial footing. The memory of three consecutive losses made me much more cautious about the cases I took on.

Also, I found that circumstances at home demanded more of my time and energy. During my children’s growing-up years, I tried to strike the right balance between work and home, but of late I found the demands of fatherhood made it hard to concentrate on anything else. I still gave my clients my all, but my fire for work did not burn as bright as it once did. Sleepless nights as a dad to five teenage and young adult children will do this for any father.

Even with so many reasons not to take on Ken and Beth as clients, something told me to listen to them. Call it a gut feeling, call it intuition based on twenty years of experience, but I believe it was providence. In spite of all the very good reasons why I should not become more involved, I ended our appointment by saying, Let me look into this and see if there might be some way I can help.

As I walked Ken and Beth out of my office, I had no idea I had just signed up for the most important case of my career. At this stage, I didn’t even know whether the car had a defect. I had a power steering recall and the suspicious timing of her getting her car back from the shop the day before she lost control of it. That wasn’t much to go on, and in product liability cases, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to show negligence which resulted in harm. The laws in the state of Georgia also guard against frivolous lawsuits. That means I couldn’t file a suit against GM just to go on a fishing expedition hoping to find something wrong. Someone losing control of their car on a rainy night was not sufficient grounds for a case. There had to be more. The only way to find out if there was more was to start digging.

CHAPTER 2

An Inevitable Decision

Agreeing to help the Meltons was not, on the face of it, a sound business decision, but I did not go into law to become a businessman. In fact, my distaste for the corporate world drove my decision to go to law school in the first place.

A counselor at the University of California, Berkeley suggested law school to me shortly before I graduated with a major in political science/economics. Looking back, I see how my choice of majors made law school seem like the obvious choice, but it wasn’t to me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my degree. Only after my friends began accepting positions in investment banking and other corporate type work did I realize that none of that was for me. Not sure what to do, I met with a placement counselor and that set the course of my life.

The fact that I even graduated from college was anything but a sure thing four years earlier. During my high school years in Southern California, I envisioned myself playing professional football someday. Football was pretty much my life back then. I was a running back on our high school team, which won a state championship. College scouts came to some of our games. Two Division I colleges even offered me a scholarship, Kansas and Hawaii. Given the choice of spending four years surrounded by wheat fields or palm trees, I obviously chose the latter, no offense to Kansas. To me it felt like a match made in heaven. I’d get to play football, go to school for free, and live in paradise. If everything went according to my eighteen-year-old self’s plans, I’d do so well that an NFL team would come calling after I graduated, if not before.

My life plans all fell apart the morning I was set to sign my national letter of intent to go to Hawaii. The coach who had recruited me called and told me that another running back they’d been pursuing had surprised them by agreeing to come there. Because they had a limited number of scholarships to hand out, signing him meant they had to rescind my scholarship offer. I told the coach I understood and everything would be okay, but inside I was crushed. I’d already closed the door on Kansas as well as some smaller schools that had also recruited me. They all moved on to other players. That left me on the outside looking in. To make matters worse, my parents’ relationship wasn’t in the best place and they ended up divorcing. All of this together left me adrift. Instead of preparing myself for upcoming football practices, I took a job cleaning pools right after my high school graduation. At the time I thought that’s what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Eventually I pulled myself together enough to enroll in a local junior college where I went out for the football team. That didn’t last. I drifted a little longer, then went to another school, dropped out, and repeated the process until I eventually finished my first two years of school at Santa Ana Junior College, where I did fairly well on the football team. Unfortunately, I suffered an injury during the middle of my second season which caused most colleges to lose interest in recruiting me. The coaches at UC Berkeley, however, told me that while they could not offer me a scholarship, they could offer me a preferred walk-on admission. Both my mom and dad went to UC Berkeley, so I was familiar with the university. I jumped on their offer since, without