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GM Directors Launch New Probe into Laggardly Recall

General Motors Co.'s board has hired a New York law firm to find out why it wasn't alerted earlier about the ignition switch defect that has triggered a belated recall and sparked multiple federal probes and dozens of lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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General Motors Co.'s board has hired a New York law firm to find out why it wasn't alerted earlier about the ignition switch defect that has triggered a belated recall and sparked multiple federal probes and dozens of lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The goal of the investigation by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is to ensure that safety-related issues reach the board faster, according to the Journal's unnamed source.

Observers say a second reason for the probe is to verify that GM's board is blameless in delaying action on the faulty switch, which has been linked to 13 fatalities. The board says it knew nothing about the problem until shortly before the company's February recall to replace the switch in 2.6 million cars.

GM has conceded to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that its engineers knew of the flawed switch more than a decade ago, but the company took no decisive action to resolve it until three months ago.

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