GM said it would appeal the ruling because Williams had barred them from telling jurors that the Malibu was one of the safest cars ever made and that 98 per cent of 1970s' American cars had their fuel tanks in the same position. Lawyers for GM said any stopped car struck at 70 miles per hour from behind, as the Malibu was on Christmas Eve in 1993, would Panish said of GM, "They were wrong, the judge saw the evidence and knew they were wrong and sought to punish them for what they did." A key piece of evidence in the trial was a 1973 memoby GM engineer Ed Ivey that said deaths from car fires cost the company $2.40 per car.

The plaintiffs used Ivey's report, combined with a second company memo about the feasibility of moving gas tanks, to suggest GM thought allowing car fires was cheaper than fixing gas tanks. GM lawyers said the Ivey memo -- written by a then-22-year-old engineer six years before the Malibu was built and never linked to its design -- was unfairly allowed to taint the case.

"There is no proof that any engineer, or anyone, ever did anything with the Ivey memo," Heilbron said. "The whole Ivey thesis is made out of smoke."