Safety administration, nshta. Can this Government Agency fulfill its mission to protect consumers . Among our guests, Gm Compensation Fund chief ken feinberg, consumer advocate, ralph nader, lead attorney representing victims, bob hilliard. The gm whistleblower who warn of a crisis years ago, and Consumer Reports top car expert, jeff bartlet. Theyre all here and a lot more this is willis report special investigation. The gm recall, how safe are we . We begin tonights program with some perspective. While the numbers are startling in terms of dollars and cars really comes down to people. People that made mistakes and drivers and passengers who paid with their lives. Rene thought her daughter sarah had fallen asleep at the wheel. That is what caused the chevy cobalt to go off the road, killing the 19yearold college student. For other families, alcohol, pills, speeding and other factors also pointed to driver error as the cause of the deadly crash that took their loved one. Then dots started being connected, largely due to a lawyer and a private investigator suing gm. They figured out there was something wrong with thing anything switch. In february of this year gm started recalling older smaller cars including chevy cobalt and saturn ion to repair the defective switch. Shockley those in the company that already knew about the problem and remained silent. We know no one is perfect but what we can not tolerate, what we will never accept, is a person or a company that knows danger exists and says nothing. Literally silence can kill. Gerri at issue, the ignition switch in many gm cars would move out of the run position. The change from run to accessory made the engine stall. That stall was a originally considered an inconvenience by gm, not a safety issue but that inconvenience robbed the driver of power steering and power breaks and airbags. That inconvenience, devastated families. For families of those who were killed, sorrow turned into loss, turned into anger at gm and anger at people who knew something and said nothing. I would just like the truth. The truth. There is no truth here. You know you say there is no coverup . But yet there is proof that there was a production time, a part replaced with the same number, with the same part number . It is not a coverup . I think that is totally a coverup and it doesnt take an investigator to see that. So i would just like some truth. And some accountability. There is no, no accountability here. It is all hogwash, just total hogwash. Gerri the department of justice is looking at criminal charges. Congress continues to hold hearings. I never want anyone associated with gm to forget what happened. I want this terrible experience, permanently etched in our collective memories. This is not another business challenge. This is a tragic problem that should never have happened and must never happen again. Gerri rene, who was once comforted by the thought at least her daughter died after falling asleep, is now haunted that the possibility that saras last moments were filled with terror as she struggled to control the car her mother thought was so safe. Wow. The story is particularly tragic because lives that had barely started ended violently. These cars were marketed to young people. Parents bought them for their kid thinking they were safe and reliable but now of course, we know that is not the case. Take a look at this print ad for the chevy cobalt, a kid with a skateboard and tag line, the coolest wheels in town. Joining me tonight, ken rymer, laura christian, both of whom lost a teenage child in one of the recalled gm cars. Lauras child, Amber Marie Rose washe first person linked to faulty gm switch. It took gm almost a decade after that crash to do anything about the problem. Also with us, bob hilliard who is representing the families of many of these victims. Welcome all. So good to have you here. I appreciate it. Bob, i will start with you. Mary barra has said there will be more deaths linked to this ignition switch. What we know is that they have said, yes, there have been 16 deaths. Now were starting to see people believe there were possibly more. Where do you put the number . I put it death, 5,000. Ill tell you why. You look at number of total deaths on u. S. Highways and you add up the amount of years that these recalled vehicles have been on the road, you have a total of 500,000 deaths. Gm and gerri everything. Then you have 26 million recalled cars. Now, mary barra made it clear that 13 or 16 is not an exclusive number. She did not indicate, nor does mr. Feinberg, that is the end of the arithmetic. The arithmetic is Pretty Simple because 5,000, believe it or not, is less than 1 of the total deaths in the United States over 10 years. Gm put new drivers into millions of cars for decades. Gerri certainly they did but it is difficult to know. Ill tell you why it is difficult to know how many people. Many of those cars are gone. They have been smashed up. They have been thrown away. Theyre in junkyard heeps. Right. Gerri remains a very big question and one that possibly we may never be able to answer. Your point is welltaken. That just means the coverup worked. Because the coverup actively kept anyone from investigating these cars while they still existed. Gerri all right. I want to show this is, i guess you would say the smoking gun here. This is the ignition switch at issue in some accidents where people died, especially young people. Youre seeing, this is what holds the ignition switch right here. You see the key. Laura, i turn to you. You got tears in your eyes i can see. There is money on the table. Gm is offering right now. Ken feinberg will come on and talk about how people can make application. Is that what youre looking for. Absolutely not. Money will not bring our kids back. Ive been able to track 167 deaths to date. Ive got tears in my eyes because hearing 5,000, i mean some of these other parents have asked me to speak up for them and be a vice of their voice of their loved one that can no longer speak. Hearing this, im not just grieving for amber, im grieving for some people that lost someone. We need legislative reform. Thats what we need. Gerri ken, what do we need and what do you need . Will you be asking for money from gm . Is that what youre looking for . I agree with laura. We talked about the same thing. Money doesnt bring these children back. Weve got to figure out why things happened the way they did and make sure this doesnt happen. We dont want more people. We dont want more families to go through what weve been through. Gerri both of you lost children driving cobalts and this is a car that weve been taub about that was marketed to kids. What does it, laura, for you, what will it take to put this behind you . I dont think i will ever put this behind me. In a way this has woken me up as far as being an advocate for people who cant really speak for themselves, trying to put forth change, just as like senator markey and blumenthal bill they sponsored. We need to make sure manufacturers like gm can never perpetrate this type of fraud ever again. This is tantamount to murder to me. Gerri well be talking about some of those solutions that are on the table now. Ken, i do want to get your response to the same question, which is, how will you ever put this behind you . Can you . We cant. My wife lost her only child. So for her this was a total lifestyle change. They will never be a grandmother. She will never be at her daughters wedding. It is not ever behind us. Every day we feel the loss of natasha and, again, like i said, this was, a big part of janes life that is longer here with us. Gerri it is so sad. People say to me, gerri, story is over. It is done. It is in the past. And i say no, because people are still dying. One woman, laura gost, 20 seven, you know her story, bob. She was a law student. Right. Gerri she was getting ready to start her career. A real rock star. She dies in a saturn ion crash in march. Right. Gerri weeks away from the time that mary barra testified in front of congress. She is a very, very sad example of how many of our nations best and brightest. She was the future of our country in a lot of ways. Top of her class, editor of her law journal. Clerked for a bankruptcy judge. On her way home on a saturday morning. Hits an 18 wheeler from behind. Her airbags do not deploy. And her parents are now faced with the sad realization that just like laura, just like ken, that this story is not over. These cars are still out there, and these defects will strike again. Gerri well, were going to have to wait to see what happens next. We have lots of people on to tell us about what could occur, where were going next. Ken, laura, bob, thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gerri weve got more to come this hour including the gm whistleblower who warned the automaker of a crisis for nearly two decades. And next, the man in charge of handling the Gm Compensation Fund is here next. I talk to ken feinberg about how the process is going. And what kind of response he is getting so far. Stay with us. Im mary and i have copd. Im jeff and i have copd. Im lisa and i have copd, but i dont want my breathing problems to get in the way of hosting my book club. Thats why i asked my doctor about breo. Oncedaily breo ellipta helps increase airflow from the lungs for a full 24 hours. And breo helps reduce symptom flareups that last several days and require oral steroids, antibiotics, or hospital stay. Breo is not for asthma. Breo contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. It is not known if this risk is increased in copd. 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You know, the kind that capitalizes on diversity across the credit spectrum and gets exposure to frontier and emerging markets. If you convert 4quarter p e of the s p 500, its yield is doing a lot better. If youve had to become your own investment expert, maybe its time for bny mellon, a different kind of wealth manager. And black swans are unpredictable. Everybody needs a helpin hand take a look at your fellow man and tell me what. What can i do. What can i do today . Gerri now while General Motors refused to join us tonight, we do have ken feinberg with us. He is the man running the gm victim as compensation fund. We before we talk to him, i i wt to show you a commercial was running that introduced the cobalt. Take a look who they were targeting. Went with an american car, huh. I did. A chevy, chevy cobalt. What do you think . That i love this car. Great gas mileage. Better coverage than a toyota or honda. They agreat things to say about it on edmund. Com. Looks like somebody is doing their homework. Good job, kiddo. Gerri ken feinberg, thanks for joining us. What comes to mind when you see that kind of commercial, clearly targeting that age group . What kind of reaction do you have . You react the same way most americans react. You hope and pray there arent too many victims driving those cars that were either killed or physically injured and you hope that well be able to compensate them who can, who are eligible. Gerri we were talking about that in the break. How that is going to work. What the deadlines are. That you have an august 1st deadline for applications. But when you get all that information together and you start, you know, plowing through it, looking at the individual applications, how do you decide what a life is worth . You cant decide what a life is worth . I am not solomon. I do not have that power. All i can do, and you know this, we talked about this before, i can only do what judges and juries do every day in every court around this country. What would the victim have earned over a lifetime but for this tragedy . What about pain and suffering and emotional distress, how does that get valued and factored in . That is all i can do. I was listening earlier. Youre absolutely right, money is a very poor substitute for loss. But that is the american system. I will do the best i can. Gerri you know, we just had another young woman lose her life, 27 years old in march. Not, about the same time mary barra was testifying in front of congress. She was about to graduate from washington lee university. She was going to be an attorney. Is someone like that young woman, when you sit down and you do the math, will her family get more money than somebody who worked at a mcdonalds . Yes. That is the american system. The fact is the answer to that is yes. Of course you still have to prove your claim. You have to show that it was an eligible vehicle. You have to show that the airbag did not deploy or you dont know whether it deployed or not. You have to give us the documentation that will allow us to evaluate the claim. But i must say, we will work with any claimant, like you gave an example of about the young girl who lost their life, well meet with that family, or that attorney representing them, if they would like to meet with me and explain the situation. Well be glad to hear them. Gerri what kind of reaction are you getting in the halls of gm . Have you been there . What are team people talking about inside of the company. Gm has been cooperative setting this program up. It isnt every company that confronts a nightmare like this and steps up. I must say, gm has not only decided that this program has no cap, whatever it costs to compensate eligible claimants, gm agrees that bankruptcy bar will not be a barrier to old claims. You mentioned earlier how so many of these old claims, the automobile is long gone. The bankruptcy bar. Gerri how do you figure that out . We have to look at the black box data. We have to look at the police report. We have to look the at photos of the tragedy. Well, lawyers do this every day. Circumstantial evidence. Remember this also. There are a few people who already settled their claims with gm in court before they knew about this, about this defect. They are now under this program, that im administering, allowed to reopen their claim, come back in, seek additional compensation. Well try and do it. Gerri i think a lot of people were shocked by that and you make note of gms generosity. The real generosity in my view would have been if they had gone after this problem from the getgo instead of letting it fester for a decade. Oh, im not here to, you will have to ask gm about that. But notice one other thing about this program. Unlike the courtroom, gerri, if the driver was intoxicated, if the driver was speeding, if the driver was texting on her or his cell phone, irrelevant. We are not looking to contributory negligence under this program. We are looking strictly at the automobile, the defect and the tragedy. Gerri lets talk about a couple of more facts. How do you apply, is there an Application Form you can pick up on the web . What is your deadline . How fast will you turn the cases around. The Application Form will be available august 1st on the web. It will be mailed to everybody on recall list. They can get it in the mail or go online and fill it out online. They have from august 1st, to end of year, december 31st to file a claim. We work into 2015 to process all claims. December 31 will be the deadline. I cant imagine how long this will take. We will get money out of the door under the protocol we announced once we get a form substantially complete within 90 days, money out the door for simple cases and 180 days for the more complex cases. Gerri so we were talking during the break how difficult this kind of work is. You have handled very difficult cases. 9 11 victims fund. Bp oil spill. Which has been the most difficult and will this be difficult. This will be difficult. Youre dealing with human beings, very emotional people. I was watching earlier today, understandably emotional. No matter how these programs vary ive been involved in, one common denominator is the emotion and the grief and reaction of people, whatever the money might be it is a pretty poor substitute. So all of them are tough assign meents . Assignments. Gerri was 9 11 the most difficult . 9 11 was a the most awful thing because it was american tragedy and so unexpected. Congress set that program up as you recall, within 13 days after the tragedy. I mean the smoke was still billowing down on the World Trade Center and pentagon and yet congress was already talking about money and people were pretty impacted adversely by that whole tragedy and that is rough. Gerri got to tell you, ken. There is smoke billowing at homes of a lot of families out there who have been impacted by this we cant to keep up with you as this proceeds. I know it will be a long and exhaustive case. Thanks for coming on tonight. Terrific to have you here. Thank you very much. Gerri coming up later in our special education, gm recall, how safe are we, ralph made dear shares, what has changed if anything since the chevrolet corvair . We have a smoking gun that shows that gm knew of a crisis. Next the whistleblower who has been warning the automaker for years something was wrong. Stay with us. [ male announcer ] if you suffer from a dry mouth then youll know how uncomfortable it can be. [ crickets chirping ] but did you know that the lack of saliva can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath . [ exhales deeply ] [ male announcer ] well there is biotene. Specially formulated with moisturizers and lubricants, biotene can provide soothing relief and it helps keep your mouth healthy, too. [ applause ] biotene for people who suffer from dry mouth. Gerri who knew what and when. Were digging deep into the General Motors massive coverup. Shining a light on decades worth of warning signs, signs recognized by people far outside of the company. From a wisconsin trooper to the university of indianas Transportation Center back in 2007, both of them linking switches to faulty airbags. Now deep inside of the company, investigations show even highranking officials were all too aware of the serious flaws despite gm denials like current Vice P