The 15 executives dismissed by General Motors over the ignition switch recall included several high-ranking executives, including at least one vice-president and two directors, sources told the Reuters news agency.
The automaker’s vice-president for environmental, sustainability and regulatory affairs, Michael Robinson; general director of vehicle safety and crashworthiness, Gay Kent; and M Carmen Benavides, recently reassigned as director of product investigations and safety regulations, were among 15 employees dismissed from GM, the sources told Reuters.
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Also fired were William Kemp, a senior lawyer responsible for engineering and safety issues, Lawrence Buonomo, head of product litigation in GM’s legal department and Jennifer Sevigny, a lawyer who heads GM’s field product assessment group.
Engineers Ray DeGiorgio, designer of the defective switches linked to at least 13 deaths, and Gary Altman, chief engineer for the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, which used those switches were also terminated, according to the report.
Barra said “some were removed because of what we consider misconduct or incompetence. Others have been relieved because they simply didn’t do enough: They didn’t take responsibility (and) didn’t act with any sense of urgency” to investigate causes of fatal crashes and inform senior management.
Barra declined to identify the 15 who had left and a GM spokesperson told Reuters the company would not provide the names.
Reuters noted that several of those dismissed worked on the GM legal staff under general counsel Michael Millikin, who was one of several top GM executives cleared by investigator Anton Valukas, the chairman of GM’s outside counsel Jenner & Block, in an internal probe that was released Thursday.
Prior to heading environmental and regulatory affairs, Robinson held several positions on the legal staff, including general counsel for GM North America, the report said.
As head of FPA, Sevigny often worked with the legal staff on lawsuits and legal claims.
Kent and Benavides were top safety officials who sat in on a number of internal meetings on the defective switches, according to the Valukas report.
Kemp sat on an important legal review committee that discussed lawsuits and was authorised to handle settlements up to $1.5m.
The committee was chaired after March 2012 by lawyer Buonomo, the Valukas report said. Some members of the legal team thought the committee could serve to give GM early warnings of safety trends and issues of concern, such as the defective ignition switches. But Buonomo told investigators that he disagreed with this approach and that spotting trends was not the committee’s function.
In addition to those dismissed, Barra said five employees were disciplined but would not discuss details, Reuters added.
