To avoid lawsuits, General Motors claims the company is only 7 years old, not 108.

[DetlefK]

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/15/why-general-motors-is-asking-the-supreme-court-to-say-its-only-7-years-old-not-108/

When a company reorganizes itself through a bankruptcy, is it the same company? And if so, is it liable for alleged wrongdoing committed by the previous version of itself?

These are questions raised by General Motors’ efforts to dodge hundreds of lawsuits related to a potentially fatal ignition-switch flaw in millions of its older sedans. After receiving a stinging defeat in a federal appellate court this past summer, the automaker is now making a Hail Mary pass to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to convince judges that it has reincarnated into a seven-year-old car company free of liabilities from its previous life.

With potentially billions of dollars’ worth of personal and financial injury claims at stake, the Detroit automaker’s lawyers argue that allowing these lawsuits to go through would undermine an important aspect of corporate bankruptcy: giving assurance to the buyers of troubled companies that they aren’t also buying a whole bunch of unexpected legal headaches.

But in GM’s case there was no outside buyer. It essentially bought itself (with taxpayer money) in the wake of the mortgage-lending crisis that tipped the nation into recession and steered the American auto industry into a ditch.

[putitinD]

1. welcome to the new Trump world.

[SamKnause]

2. Fuck, this shit is never going to end.

[Cracklin Charlie]

3. It has always been thus.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. It was a fakeruptcy from the beginning. A trick to shed debt.

Ask a GM senior manager about his or her seniority, and the answer will probably be more than seven years.

It's not a new company.

[BSdetect]

5. Well they are adept at deception

Smuggled plans for improved Opel trucks etc to the Nazis during WWII, then sued the US Govt for bombing damages to their German subsidiary Opel (after the war ended).

What a glorious patriotic company?