Nearly two years after General Motors was sanctioned by the U.S. Justice Department to face charges of  wire fraud and scheming to conceal material facts from a U.S. regulator, the Detroit-based automotive giant is in the clear after reaching a $900 million settlement to resolve the charges. 

GM came under fire in February 2014, after the company, under newly appointed CEO Mary Barra, revealed that they had been hiding faulty engineering and managerial practices, which may have resulted in 124 deaths due to vehicles defects, over the past decade. The defect caused cars to stall and prevented air bags from deploying by cutting off their power. GM subsequently lost over $5 billion in automobile profit following the announcement of the scandal.

After taking over the company Barra quickly made plans to create a compensation fund for crash victims and appoint a safety official to oversea all managerial communications within the engineering department. She also openly acknowledged and accepted Anton Valukas’s (Jenner & Block law firm) internal report which exposed major flaws with GM’s managerial system. Throughout the nearly two year litigation case, Barra made all internal documents requested by federal investigators available and fully cooperated with the legal process.

With the settlement, GM agreed to failing to report a potentially legal safety defect to U.S. regulators and the general public. For this, the automotive company will pay partial settlement to the private litigation of crash victims and their families, as well as a settlement to shareholder litigation.

The settlement was approved by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan, NY, and no individuals within GM will be criminally charged moving forward.

“The steps we took to do the right thing … persuaded the Justice Department to defer prosecutions,” Barra said during a televised talk to GM employees. She also reminded employees, “people were hurt and people died in our cars.”

Moving forward, Barra will attempt to revive the once industry-leading automotive company by selling investors and the general public on a renewed focus on the safety of GM vehicles, as well as the return to producing innovative vehicles.

For some families, the $900 million settlement does nothing to ease the loss of a loved one:

“We buried our loved ones because GM buried a deadly defect,” said Laura Christian, who’s 16-year-old daughter died in a 2005 crash as a result of the defect. “And yet today all GM has to do is write another check to escape.”

photos/gm motors