DETROIT – Fiat Chrysler Automobiles wants a judge to throw out a racketeering lawsuit General Motors filed against the Italian-American automaker last year.

In a motion to dismiss the suit filed Friday in federal court in Detroit, FCA pushes back against GM’s claims that FCA purposefully cost GM billions of dollars by allegedly corrupting the bargaining process.

The original lawsuit was noteworthy in part because it showcased a potentially high stakes corporate fight between two global automakers in an unusually public way.

FCA said GM’s arguments fail to meet the standard for a racketeering claim, noting that GM was trying to “piggyback off indictments and plea agreements” brought to light as part of the wide-ranging federal corruption probe.

That investigation, which initially focused on misuse of blue collar worker training funds, was first revealed in 2017 with indictments of FCA’s one-time lead labor negotiator Alphons Iacobelli and Monica Morgan, the widow of the late General Holiefield, who had been a UAW vice president.

In the filing Friday, FCA called out GM’s theory in its suit that FCA sought to force a merger between the two companies by making concessions to the UAW during 2015 contract bargaining – “which harmed FCA itself – knowing that the UAW would extract those same concessions from GM through so-called ‘pattern bargaining.'”

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