As the contrite chief executive of General Motors appears before a House subcommittee today to explain why, for years, her company decided not to repair or even disclose a deadly flaw in its cars, and to promise that such things won’t happen at “the new GM”; as members of the subcommittee ask their tough questions and seethe with outrage; as the cameras roll on the whole Washington spectacle, Brooke Melton is still dead and gone, killed on her birthday on a road in Paulding County when her car suddenly switched off and, the power steering and the antilock brakes disabled, slammed into another car.
Jennifer Brooke Melton died in 2010.
Melton, 29, a pediatric nurse, was driving her 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt on Ga. 92 in Paulding County to meet her boyfriend for a birthday dinner.
On Monday night, as GM CEO Mary Barra prepared for a difficult appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight — her testimony, filed with the subcommittee in advance, mentions “the way we will do things at the new GM” — Ken Melton was asked what he would say to Barra if he had the chance to speak with her.
“I will use their words,” Melton told the AJC in a phone interview from his Kennesaw home. “It was a business decision not to fix that ignition switch. That is their exact worlds. That infuriates me. My daughter’s dead because of a business decision that they made not to fix a problem that was known up to 10 years ago.”
Melton and his wife, Beth, sued GM in 2011 and settled for an undisclosed sum last fall. They still have a case pending against Thornton Chevrolet, where Brooke had taken the car for repairs just days before her death. Their attorney, Lance Cooper of Marietta, said the trial in that suit will begin June 8.
Cooper said the turning point of the case against GM was the download of the Cobalt’s “black box,” which he said showed the key had moved from the on position to the “accessory” position seconds before the impact.
“We thought originally it was a power steering problem,” he said. “Then there was a download of the black box of the vehicle, which showed the key was in the accessory position at the time of the crash, and three to four seconds before the crash, the RPMs of the engine went to zero.
“All of a sudden there was an explanation as to what happened: her key turned. So the black box was the first piece of information that was critical. It was the game changer.”
Not long after settling with the Meltons, GM recalled 800,000 cars, citing faulty ignition switches. Cooper wrote the automaker a letter warning it that, according to information he had assembled, the problem was much more extensive. Days later, the company doubled the recall to 1.6 million vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, covering the Chevy Cobalt, the Saturn Ion, the Pontiac Solstice, the Saturn Sky and Chevrolet HHR.
Return to myajc.com for updates on the congressional hearings.
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