Member Spotlight: DiCello Levitt’s Adam J. Levitt and Christopher Stombaugh Discuss GM Verdict and a New Frontier in Class Action Trials
In early October, a California jury returned a landmark verdict of $102.6 million to a class of consumers in a lawsuit against General Motors LLC.
After eight days of trial, the jury found that GM had manufactured and installed a defective engine that caused premature breakdown in hundreds of thousands of sold/leased SUVs and trucks between 2011 to 2014, while hiding those defects from the public. The estimated 38,000 class members from California, North Carolina, and Idaho were awarded damages of $2,700 per vehicle — which is 100% of what plaintiffs’ counsel requested.
Public Justice recently sat down with member firm DiCello Levitt’s Adam J. Levitt and Christopher Stombaugh to discuss the significance of the verdict and class action trial, the importance of educating the next generation of plaintiffs’ attorneys, and more.
How did you get involved with litigation?
Adam: About six years ago, Dee Miles at Beasley Allen and I, along with our respective law firm teams, began working up this lawsuit, where we did an awful lot of upfront expert work and laid the groundwork for a lot of the issues brought up during the trial.
We filed in 2016 on behalf of plaintiffs alleging that GM knew of an engine defect in its 5.3 liter vehicles, which includes some of its SUVs and light trucks as early as 2008, yet chose to hide the defect and continue manufacturing and selling hundreds of thousands of vehicles with the defective engine for more than six years thereafter. Because of GM’s bankruptcy, our class period was from 2011 to 2014, since the claims from the earlier years were discharged in bankruptcy.
After protracted, and often spirited, motion practice, we got three statewide classes certified in the federal court in San Francisco, in addition to having nine more cases pending across the United States, alleging statewide classes in our clients’ home states. The three statewide classes that we got certified in the federal court in San Francisco were a California class, an Idaho class, and a North Carolina class, comprising approximately 38,000 vehicles.
Chris: I was brought in at the eleventh hour to help determine how to best use the evidence that our team’s lawyers obtained through discovery, and how to optimally synthesize, translate, and crystallize that evidence in a manner best-suited for consumption by a Bay Area jury. To understand how to best communicate the real story, themes, and motivations behind it, we held twenty focus groups across the Bay Area counties where we knew the jury pool would be drawn from, speaking to well over 200 people.
It was an iterative process, and as we spoke to each focus group and refined our trial message, we learned several key issues, including the poor reputation GM had in the Bay Area — even with families that loved their GM — where many consumers were unsurprised by the fact GM was being sued yet again. These focus groups really helped set what the trial presentation was going to be, from my opening statement forward through trial, and culminating in my main closing argument. The focus group data was wedded closely to the facts, and also, very importantly, gave us an understanding of GM’s problems, including, very significantly, GM’s fundamental misunderstanding of its own corporate credibility in this case to begin with.
Describe how the trial unfolded. What was the most memorable part of trying the case?
Chris: It was a huge team effort, in which we collaborated with our co-lead trial counsel, Beasley Allen, leaning on everyone’s personal strengths and knowledge around GM, with additional support from co-counsel Jennie Anderson of Andrus Anderson LLP and Anthony Garcia of AG Law.
The jurors got to see how those decisions at the upper levels of General Motors got translated down into the real lives of these consumers, how GM gave their own loyal customers the runaround, and how GM hid vital information for its own economic advantage.
In the end, I feel that the real heroes in this case were our class representatives. Their stories ultimately carried the day, where they gave compelling testimony on a real consumer-to-consumer basis that deeply connected with the jurors. Their stories also validated everything that the jurors had heard about from GM’s emails, to its engineers’ inconsistent, evasive, and misleading testimony, and everything else that we had tracked through from the focus groups to our trial strategy. The jurors got to see how those decisions at the upper levels of General Motors got translated down into the real lives of these consumers, how GM gave their own loyal customers the runaround, and how GM hid vital information for its own economic advantage.
How does this case reflect the importance of class actions in preserving access to justice for consumers and beyond? And ending court secrecy?
Adam: Many consumers question the power they have as a single person. That’s where the class action device is such an important thing, because the benefit and importance of the class action device is to enable the representative aggregation of claims in a manner that put companies under severe economic pressure and risk and enables consumers, shareholders, and businesses to obtain the highest quality representation to level the playing field in a manner that fosters corporate deterrence, economic justice, and social and industrial change. Without that, companies are going to be able to keep on doing what they’re doing.
Finally, this case further confirms how courts should be open and court documents should be publicly available, with confidentiality being the exception, not the rule. An email from fifteen years ago is almost certainly not a trade secret. The sad reality is that we’ve all seen how companies against whom we all litigate try to bury as much information as possible under spurious and grossly overreaching “confidentiality” designations. Our judicial system is not meant to be a private star chamber. It’s supposed to be out in the open.
Chris: Exactly. Many of GM’s documents were deemed and marked confidential for GM use only. Not only was there a lack of transparency between GM and consumers, but between GM and their own dealer service network.
Finally, the thing that was so refreshing from the focus groups work that we did in California was how much support there was for the idea of class actions as being an ultimate leveling tool with large and powerful companies and individuals.
One of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s lies about class actions is that they’re never tried and that everyone settles after class certification. How does this win reject that thinking?
Adam: One of the reasons that class action cases don’t get tried is because the defense bar doesn’t want to try them. That’s an important thing to remember, because, in most instances, it’s the defendants who blink and who pull the plug. While it’s true that a lot of plaintiffs’ firms don’t put enough emphasis and focus on trying cases, firms like our firm, DiCello Levitt, take a radically different approach and are working hard to change that.
We’ve always been a ‘trial-first’ firm, where we’re ready, willing, and able to go to trial against any defendant on any sort of case, and where we train our younger lawyers to try cases. Since its founding five years ago, DiCello Levitt has been the fastest-growing plaintiffs’ firm in the United States, expanding more than 500% — from eleven lawyers in Chicago and Cleveland to 61 lawyers in Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Washington, DC, and Birmingham. And, our personnel expansion has been matched by our physical expansion, including our vastly expanded office spaces in Chicago and Cleveland, where we’ve installed mock courtrooms to further place our trial-first approach front and center.
And our approach is more than courtroom skills training. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment of the reality that if you know how to try a case and you look at each of your cases as one that will ultimately or could ultimately go to trial, you prepare differently. It’s important that lawyers treat trials like the logical or inevitable end of each case and figure out the right way to get there, instead of treating the discovery process or motion practice as an end unto itself. Those are simply links in a chain or pieces in a puzzle that ultimately get you to the end of the line in trial. Our goal has always been to get to the end of the line. We know it, our colleagues know it, our opponents know it, and courts know it.
The results of this case could be revolutionary. General Motors came into this case with a large degree of hubris and overconfidence. Not only were they humbled by the evidence, but by the members of the jury who understood the issues at stake, especially for the consumers.
Chris: Exactly. The results of this case could be revolutionary. General Motors came into this case with a large degree of hubris and overconfidence. Not only were they humbled by the evidence, but by the members of the jury who understood the issues at stake, especially for the consumers.
This case represents a real tying of trial lawyers trying cases with class lawyers in such a way that will lift all boats in terms of being real threats and raising the stakes for defendants in these cases tremendously. We really want more lawyers to be capable to try cases like this.
In recent years, efforts from Congress to pass legislation (such as H.R. 985) that would make bringing class actions virtually impossible have grown stronger. How can the trial bar and general public support the fight to protect class actions?
Adam: It’s all about training and education, as well as providing more opportunities for lawyers to learn how to work cases up and take them to trial.
It’s about making sure the next generation of trial lawyers looks a lot more like the United States does than the last generation did and the importance of empowering them to lead meaningful cases now and into the future.
We see how emerging organizations like Shades of Mass, which was co-founded by DiCello Levitt partner and Public Justice Board Member Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmermann — are working to support attorneys of color and ensure that more Black and Brown lawyers take on leadership positions in mass tort and class action multidistrict litigations. It’s about making sure the next generation of trial lawyers looks a lot more like the United States does than the last generation did and the importance of empowering them to lead meaningful cases now and into the future.
With respect to educating the public, we need to do a better job of educating consumers and businesses of the importance of completing and returning class action claim forms. Today, filing claims forms is much easier than it’s ever been in our history, which also allows us to reach a large number of class members and drive higher claims rates, which has always been our goal.
Chris: It’s both an educational thing and an empowerment thing for lawyers. Reaching out to the profession and teaching constantly in the trial practice areas are huge parts of what we do.
As for the general public, it’s important to vote correctly, first and foremost. We will see fewer class actions if we have a change in the House of Representatives, and it’s important people understand the consequences of their vote this November.
The case is Raul Siqueiros, et al. v. General Motors LLC, Case №316-cv-07244 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Learn more about member firm DiCello Levitt at https://dicellolevitt.com/.
Interested in being featured in the next Member Spotlight? Email Communications Director Lucy Sears at lsears@publicjustice.net.
