Scheduling Order For General Motors OnStar Lawsuits Set for MDL Pretrial Proceedings

As a growing number of lawsuits continue to be filed by owners of GM vehicles purchased since 2016, alleging that OnStar systems secretly collected driving data and sold that information to insurance companies, the U.S. District Judge presiding over the claims has issued a schedule for key deadlines in the litigation.

The claims emerged after a report was published by The New York Times earlier this year, which revealed that General Motors OnStar systems were collecting data on consumers’ driving activity without their knowledge, including acceleration habits, hard braking events and GPS data. The companies then sold this information to LexisNexis and Verisk, which in turn have provided the data to insurance companies for years, without the vehicle owners’ permission.

General Motors promoted the OnStar system as providing a variety of in-vehicle services, including automatic crash response, roadside assistance, stolen vehicle tracking, navigation and other connectivity features. However, vehicle owners were not told that OnStar data could be used to raise their private insurance rates.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in more than 30 OnStar class action lawsuits brought throughout the federal court system earlier this year, centralized pre-trial proceedings were established in the Northern District of Georgia, where the Honorable Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. is presiding over coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL).

Earlier this month, the parties met with Judge Thrash for the first time in a status conference, to discuss a wide range of issues and how to effectively and efficiently move the cases toward trial or settlement.

Following the conference, Judge Thrash issued a case management order (PDF) on Thursday, outlining a series of key dates and deadlines intended to examine issues common to all claims.

The schedule calls for the parties to file a Master Consolidated Complaint by December 13, which will outline all of the allegations raised in various different General Motors OnStar lawsuits filed to date. The parties have then been directed to file a proposed discovery order 60 days later, and any motions to dismiss must be brought by March 13, 2025.

After replies in support of motions to dismiss are submitted by May 23, 2025, fact discovery would begin soon after, and Judge Thrash anticipates fact discovery will take at least a year, continuing through at least the middle or end of 2026.

November 2024 OnStar Class Action Lawsuit Updates

As the parties continue to move forward through the opening stages of the litigation, individuals impacted by data collection practices continue to come forward to join lawsuits or file individual arbitration claims, seeking damages and compensation.

As part of the coordinated management of the litigation, it is expected that Judge Thrash will establish a “bellwether” program, where a small group of representative cases will be selected to go through case-specific discovery in preparation for early trial dates, which will help the parties gauge how juries are likely to respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout various cases in the litigation.

While the outcome of these early trial dates will not be binding on other claims in the litigation, the average lawsuit payouts may influence eventual OnStar settlement negotiations that will be necessary to avoid each individual case being set for trial in the coming years.