General Motors has decided to extend the deadline on its faulty ignition-switch compensation program to families of people who have had fatal accidents or have been injured in a car crash that involved certain cars from the company. These people who wanted to file a claim are now given an extra month to do so as the deadline extension is stretched to end on Jan. 31, 2015.
The decision came from Kenneth R. Feinberg who is tasked to administer the company's compensation fund. He believes it will give ample time to families who may not be aware that there's a compensation program from the company.
Feinberg's office also updated the submitted claims list and confirmed that it has approved compensation for the families of 33 victims that were killed due to faulty ignition switches involving GM cars.
"We agreed with Ken Feinberg's recommendation to extend the compensation program deadline," said General Motors in a statement. "Our goal with the program has been to reach every eligible person impacted."
It was revealed that the earliest fatality brought by an ignition defect in a GM car occurred in a 2003 crash of a Saturn Ion. The victim was identified as 81 year old Jean P. Averill. Until informed by The New York Times, Averill's family was not aware of the company's compensation program wherein they are eligible to claim the minimum amount of $1 million from the fund.
Feinberg further explained that the decision on extending the program's deadline is not influenced in any part by the company's failure to notify the family of Averill. The real intention is to give more time to thousands of people who may just have been contacted by the company only recently.
There are at least 850,000 letters that are about to be sent by GM to new owners and registrants of used vehicles and also to those people who failed to receive the notices due to incorrectly filed addresses. So far, the company had already accomplished sending over 4.5 million notices to both current and former owners of vehicles that are affected by the faulty ignition switch.
"I think it's highly unlikely that there are many people who don't know about this program by now," said Feinberg.
The program, dubbed as GM Ignition Compensation Claims Resolution Facility, had started to accept claims on Aug. 1. As of Nov. 14, it had received more than 2,000 claims that are related to deaths and serious injuries caused by the issue on the ignition switch.
