Mitigate Business Risks This paper is composed for the individual assignment for week 3 of the MBA 633 Legal Issues in the Workplace course. The topic for this assignment consists of mitigating business risks resulting from negligence and product liability. This paper will touch upon the awareness needed by human resources in dealing with known risks. I will be using the 1999 General Motors (GM) personal injury and product liability lawsuit over the 1979 Chevrolet Malibu’s faulty gas tank as an example.
1979 Chevrolet Malibu
In the lawsuit of Ms. Anderson vs. General Motors Corp. a jury in Los Angeles awarded the plaintiffs $107 million in compensatory damages and $4.8 billion in punitive damages. The jury decided on the amount relative to GM’s advertising amount on models with possibly dangerous gas tank placement. Ms. Anderson, her four children and Jo Tigner (a family friend) were severely burned after a rear end collision ignited the gas tank of their 1979 Chevrolet Malibu. The plaintiffs were driving home from Christmas Eve mass in 1993. While stopped at a stop light a drunk driver plowed into the back of them at a speed in excess of 50 miles per hour (Pollack, 1999).…show more content… Brian J. Panish (the victims’ lawyer) stated that the 1979 Malibu’s gas tank was only 11 inches away from the rear bumper instead of 20 inches like other models. “He said the trial testimony showed that it would have cost General Motors $8.59 per vehicle for a safer design but that the company decided it would be cheaper to settle any lawsuits that arose” (Pollack, 1999). There was also reasonable evidence that GM was aware of the problem during the 1979 Malibu crash
