What started out a couple months ago as a “Slow Boat to China,” today feels more like the Voyage of the Damned.  Yesterday I filed this “Opening Brief” (plus the Sale Opinion at Appendix A and the Sale Order and MPA at Appendix B) on behalf of my five clients in our appeal of the GM Sale Order:  Callan Campbell, et al., v. Motors Liquidation Company, Case No. 09-6818 (NRB) (S.D.N.Y.). This appeal is the only one pending that challenges the abhorrent treatment of preexisting products liability claims in either the GM or Chrysler bankruptcy cases. When I first got involved in the case three months ago, I summarized here the injuries and the myriad adversities faced by my clients on a daily basis. I wrote: “The sad, and all too tragic, stories of my clients, taken from the filed objection, are set forth below.  The only thing my clients did wrong here was buy a GM car.  For this act of brand loyalty, they have paid dearly. It’s not enough that people lose their lives and get severely injured from design defects and product flaws, now they and their loved ones get thrown under the bus!”

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As part of its “reinvention,” GM wants to leave behind products liability claimants. “New GM” wants to jettison its legal responsibilities to “old” customers who were seriously injured by defective products—including customers who bought products from pre-bankruptcy General Motors who haven’t yet been injured. In this there is precedence. As I discussed here on my Bankruptcy Litigation Blog, Chrysler stiffed products liability claimants when they restructured post C-11. Is this going to be a case of deja vu all over again? Not if I can help it.

The brilliant lawyer, author, and ex-blogger, Bill Patry (now senior copyright counsel at Google), wrote on his Patry Copyright Blog back in 2005 about the greatest Biblical scholar of all time, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhak (whom everyone affectionately calls “Rashi“.

Well, the initial pleadings have been filed. Chrysler’s argument is essentially that it’s a “dead man walking.” In its opening memorandum of law in support of its motion to approve the sale, Chrysler argues that if the “sale” doesn’t close on the accelerated timetable proposed, it will wither on the vine, resulting in “a rapid and severe loss of value.” (Mem. at 10). Surprisingly, though, Chrysler’s opening memorandum doesn’t squarely address the issue laid bare in my previous post and in the preliminary objection of the dissident lenders; that is, why isn’t the proposed transaction a sub rosa plan of the kind prohibited under the law of the Second Circuit?