A US senator has said that General Motor should have fired the general counsel for the company's poor handling of a fatally flawed ignition switch. Senator Claire McCaskill, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, said the company had a culture of 'lawyering up' as a defense against lawsuites which 'killed innocent customers'.  Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg BNA, Senator Richard Blumenthal said that GM's lawyers failed the company and the public and said he believed that an ongoing US Department of Justice criminal investigation would find blame. 'Lawyers are typically supposed to be the ones who make sure corporations comply with the law in spirit and letter,' he said, adding: 'Here the lawyers for GM actually enabled cover-up, concealment, deceit and even fraud.'

Outrage 

Meanwhile the CEO's defence of  the head of legal at the US congressional hearing has caused outrage. Mary Barra told the hearing:  'Mike Millikin is a man of tremendous integrity.' However, according to a report in Forbes, the CEO could have developed a blnd spot for her chief legal counsel. It reports that expert observers with legal and GM backgrounds believe Ms Barra should be encouraging Mr Millikin out of the businesses instead of 'stoutly defending a performance by her 65-year-old chief counsel that, at best, suggested awful things happening on his watch and, at worse, may have made him at least negligent in some of the most inexcusable aspects of the company's continuing recall crisis,' Forbes contributor Dale Buss said. The article quoted a lawyer with long ties to GM, who says that 'Even if Millikin didn't  know, he should have known. He was in charge of a department that screwed up.'  Sources: Forbes; Bloomberg BNA