An appeals court in the U.S. has upheld a 2020 ruling tossing out the racketeering lawsuit that General Motors filed against Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
General Motors filed the racketeering lawsuit against FCA in November 2019. It claimed that its rival had bribed United Auto Workers (UAW) union officials to corrupt labor talks to its advantage. The General claimed this cost it billions of dollars.
While GM has long believed it had a strong case, a federal judge in mid-2020 ordered General Motors chief executive Mary Barra and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles chief executive Mike Many to meet and resolve the lawsuit. The judge noted that there were more urgent issues facing the United States and that the lawsuit was a “waste of time and resources.”
Read More: GM Asks Court To Reinstate Its Racketeering Lawsuit Against FCA For The Second Time
GM tried multiple times to have the lawsuit reinstated but earlier this week, the three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the attempt, Auto News reports.
“Even accepting GM’s theory as true, the chain of causation between FCA’s bribes and GM’s injury is still too attenuated,” the three-judge panel said in its ruling.
The lawsuit alleged that FCA corrupted the contract bargaining process between GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in an attempt to force a merger between the two car manufacturers. The lawsuit claimed that late FCA chief executive Sergio Marchionne was responsible for conceiving, executing, and sponsoring the wrongdoing.
FCA had long called the lawsuit “meritless” and said that GM’s recently amended complaint was “full of preposterous allegations.”
