The trial, scheduled to begin on 11 January, is for a case brought forward by Robert Scheuer, who was injured while driving his 2003 Saturn Iron in 2014. It is the first of hundreds of cases that allege accidents that resulted in death and injury were caused by the ignition switch defect, which prompted the recall of more than 2.6 million vehicles last year.

Taped depositions

On 17 September, GM settled 1,380 lawsuits relating to the defect and recall, including a shareholder case, for US$575m. However, the injury and death cases, many of which are class actions by consumers, were not among that number. According to co-lead plaintiffs counsel Robert Hilliard of Texas-based Hilliard Muñoz Gonzalez, GM has so far only allowed the videotaped depositions of its employees to be played at trial. However, upon filing a trial subpoena for Mr Milliken's testimony in court, Mr Hilliard implored that the time had come to put 'a live, breathing human on the stand'.

'We want to be able to show, let the jury see, exactly what was going inside GM in real time, not just from an engineering standpoint, but from the lawyer's standpoint,' Mr Hilliard said.

GM in-house lawyers deposed

It is understood that over 240 people have already been deposed, including Mr Milliken, who was deposed for seven hours on August 26, and GM chief executive officer Mary Barra, on October 19. Notably, in-house lawyers have come under close scrutiny throughout the unfolding saga, with at least nine GM lawyers among those already deposed. Plaintiff lawyers are also seeking to invoke the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege in order to gain access to the privileged notes and memos of King & Spalding, GM's outside counsel in many of the accident cases. Source: The National Law Journal