Please support a legislative fix in H.R. 8440 that will finally bring justice to the accident victims left behind in the GM bailout

• The legislation provides just compensation due to hundreds of accident victims scattered across nearly every state who died or suffered serious injury from defective GM cars yet were left behind by the federal government when it bought General Motors out of bankruptcy in the 2009 auto bailout.

• These accident victims were paid pennies on the dollar for the approximately $936 million that Old GM estimated at the time of the bailout would be owed them. By comparison, the government agreed that once it took control of “New GM,” the $60 billion in claims due to corporate vendors, senior executives, unions, pension plans, and retirees would be paid in full. Twenty of the 26 Senators on the Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation signed a strongly worded letter at the time urging assumption of these claims by New GM, but to no avail. 

• Please reach out to your U.S. House and Senate representatives and encourage them to support the legislative fix contained in this bipartisan legislation, recently introduced by Congressmen Barry Moore (R-LA) and Troy Carter (D-LA), that remedies the injustice dealt the accident victims by the federal government when it unfairly targeted their claims against New GM for extinguishment in the bailout. 

• No special Congressional appropriation is necessary to fund H.R. 8440 because the Treasury’s “Judgment Fund” is available to fully fund the victims’ liquidated, Court-approved bankruptcy claims through a Court-approved settlement process. A comparable fix was enacted legislatively to enable the 1998 settlement of black farmers’ discrimination cases against the USDA in Pigford v. Glickman. This settlement was also paid through the Judgment Fund.