I'm not convinced that point is really the same, though. I believe the court would look at this in terms of what the customer would expect--and cars, more often than not, are resold before their usable life ends. Phones, not so much--that secondary market is more or less for people who would buy a new phone regardless of what value they got for their old one. Vehicle owners would be far more prohibited from purchasing a new vehicle without the ability to trade in their cars at a rate that fits a normal depreciation curve.

I'm not an attorney so I'd be interested to hear a more educated perspective on this.

It's excessive if you look at it against their annual net income, sure, but I'm if you did the analysis on the net affect the faulty parts had on what owners would reasonably expect for future value, I'm sure it makes more sense. GM is also blaming ONE ENGINEER for this issue, so it's not like we're talking about a company that made an honest mistake--this was a problem that was actively ignored/swept under the rug for some time.

Many theoretical physicists use their imagination in order to have deep thought about the universe and its establishment, yet it rarely leads them to a "God." Are you saying in order to believe in God, you have to have an imagination--just like you would if you believed in Santa Clause? You have to have faith to believe in Santa Clause as a kid, but once you realize that it was just a story that old people told you when you weren't old enough to understand how things really worked, it probably wasn't that hard to disbelieve.

My view is the same as yours ("I don't have all the answers, and I'm okay with that"), and I have a pretty good imagination, but none of this leads me to any belief in a god that oversees our moral aptitude. If your definition of God is simply all that you can't understand, then I suppose I'd submit to that philosophy, but most God-fearing people don't stop there. May I ask, are you a practicing member of a religion?