One of the General Motors Co. engineers at the center of the controversy over the company's handling of a deadly ignition switch defect has met with congressional investigators, indicating lawmakers are accelerating their probe, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Raymond DeGiorgio, who was suspended last month with pay, traveled to Capitol Hill to talk about his role in a design change to ignition switches installed in 2.6 million GM compact cars that the company recalled earlier this year. The ignition switches can slip out of the run position, causing the cars to stall, and lose power to steering and airbags. GM has linked 13 fatalities to the defect. Plaintiffs' lawyers say the death toll is higher. In 2006, about two years after cars containing the defective switches were launched, DeGiorgio signed off on a change to the ignition switches that improved their performance, according to company documents. But company documents show that the design change wasn't accompanied by a change to the part number. That action made it difficult to track the change, and it wasn’t until 2013, as a result of ongoing litigation, that GM officials realized that the part number was not changed.
