In re General Motors Corp‪.‬

In 1976 the defendant, General Motors (GM), began substituting engines produced by its Chevrolet Division in many of the 1977 model year cars produced by its Oldsmobile Division. The discovery of the engine switch culminated in the commencement of a plethora of lawsuits against GM in the state and federal courts. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred those actions which had been filed in the federal courts to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois for consolidated pretrial proceedings with several actions which were already pending there. See 28 U.S.C. § 1407. The district court certified that the actions could be maintained as a class action and later approved the settlement of the actions as to one of two subclasses of Oldsmobile purchasers. This appeal is from the order of the district court approving the subclass settlement. Although the facts are lengthy, the litigation's history complex, and the resolution of the issues difficult, the issues may be stated with relative simplicity: