2.Responsibility for Product SafetyFrom Wall Street Journal

In 1991, an errant trailer broke off of a pickup truck and careened straight into an Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon parked at a Virginia tollbooth. The trailer punctured the car's gas tank, located behind the rear axle and the car caught fire, killing a 13-year old boy. His parents sued General Motors, contending the station wagon's design was defective.

In a trial, the plaintiffs' lawyers introduced a "smoking gun" document found in GM's own files. Written in 1973 by a GM engineer, the memo calculates that there are a maximum of 500 fatalities per year in accidents with fuel-fed fires where the bodies were burnt. Each fatality had a value of $200,000. Based on those assumptions, the memo calculates that each fatality costs GM $2.40 per automobile in current operation.

A plaintiff's witness who works for GM testified that an executive told him that it would cost $4.50 per vehicle to remedy this defect.Question:

GM doesn't have to take any course of action from an act-based utilitarian perspective.

Group of answer choices

True

False