General Motors has made its first offers to people applying for the company's victim compensation fund, which had received 850 total claims as of late Wednesday.
Formal proposals have gone to 15 people who have filed claims, attorney Kenneth Feinberg told the Detroit News. The 15 claims include claims for both death and injury connected with GM's ignition switch recall from earlier this year.
People who have been injured in GM vehicles and the families of those killed can accept the offers, after which they will get formal letters and sign releases that free GM from future claims.
Families who file a death claim that is cleared by the fund's administrators will receive $1 million for the death claim itself as well as $300,000 payments to surviving spouses and children for restitution. The fund, which has no cap for overall payments, will also calculate the economic value of the person who died.
The compensation fund had approved 21 death claims by Monday along with 16 injury claims, four of which were for serious injuries. The figure is up from the 19 deaths that the fund had approved as of Sept. 12, and the number of death claims will likely keep increasing.
"The number of deaths will continue to inch up," Feinberg told the News. "It is still early in the program."
As of Friday, the fund had received 143 death claims.
The victims fund is designed to provide restitution to people injured and the families of those killed in GM small cars that were equipped with faulty ignition switches. The vehicles, which included models such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, could turn off suddenly while moving if the driver's knee bumped the ignition.
GM paid a $35 million federal fine in May, the maximum amount allowed under law, and the automaker is still under investigation by the Justice Department.
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