Zach Wendling
Nebraska Examiner
LINCOLN — Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers on Tuesday announced that his office is suing General Motors for allegedly collecting and selling data on drivers without their consent for at least the past decade.
The 40-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning in Lancaster County District Court, alleges that Michigan-based General Motors and associated OnStar products collected driver data and sold it to third-party companies without drivers’ consent since at least 2015. In turn, that data would be sold to insurance companies, sometimes leading to increased rates or canceled insurance.
Collected data allegedly included how fast someone was driving, how hard stops were, geolocation and whether seat belts were worn.
“We know that you can actually do what these insurance companies and what companies like GM want to do legally, through consent, through notice, through disclosures,” Hilgers told reporters. “It’s not what they did here.”
The lawsuit alleges an “aggressive, concerted effort” to enroll purchasers into GM products, which Hilgers said led to some drivers being opted into the products without their consent in what he termed “emotional blackmail” — that OnStar and other services were necessary for family or personal safety or that the data wouldn’t be shared except in “limited circumstances.”
According to the lawsuit, General Motors has 54 dealerships in Nebraska, does business with 19 Nebraska suppliers and has 16 Nebraska-based employees.
While Hilgers couldn’t say how many Nebraskans were impacted over the past 10 years, the lawsuit says GM delivered nearly 19,000 vehicles to the state in 2023.
General Motors began partnering with car insurance companies in 2005, the lawsuit continues, to allow drivers to opt in for data collection so they could receive a discount for “good” driving.
But Hilgers’ office says such devices became “unnecessary” over time even as the products have been installed by default in almost all new GM vehicles since 2015.
Hilgers said an attorney in his office combed through all of GM’s privacy terms and conditions and found “nothing that we think clears up what we think is very misleading, very deceptive activity.”
A spokesperson for General Motors told the Nebraska Examiner: “We remain committed to protecting consumers’ privacy and will conduct a review of the complaint.”
Asked whether Hilgers’ office had contacted GM or OnStar before Tuesday, Hilgers said: “They’re aware of our investigation.” He said part of the lawsuit seeks to understand the “full scope” of how Nebraskans were harmed to craft a remedy specific to those consumers.
The lawsuit by the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office follows a nearly identical lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed in August. The Federal Trade Commission also proposed a settlement against GM in January. The company said it would “go above and beyond existing law” but mirror new protections the company had been rolling out to give customers “more transparency and control.”
FTC Chair Lina Khan in January said GM collected data sometimes as often as every three seconds. The FTC has not yet voted to finalize the settlement order, a spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.
The Nebraska lawsuit alleges “deceptive” and “unconscionable” trade practices by GM and asks for a jury trial with the following requested relief:
- Civil penalties of $2,000 per violation of Nebraska’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act or its Consumer Protection Act.
- A permanent ban on GM and others engaging in such conduct.
- Any money acquired as a result of the violations to be restored to impacted consumers.
- State legal fees.
- “Any other relief” the court deems “just and equitable.”
In addition to the AG’s Office, Nebraska is working with three attorneys based out of Seattle and Houston from the Susman Godfrey law firm.
“We filed this lawsuit because one large company decided that it wouldn’t honestly tell Nebraskans that their data was going to be used to impact their insurance rates. This is wrong,” Hilgers said. “Our office will hold companies that mislead Nebraskans accountable, no matter how large.”
