Companies, lawyers and judges have long faced criticism for suppressing information contained in lawsuits about product dangers. However, legal experts said that factors such as tort reform and rising lawsuit costs might be further dimming the legal system’s role in bringing such risks to light.

Those experts said that the incentives for plaintiffs’ lawyers to invest large sums of money in a case that may or not serve as a kind of legal canary in a coal mine have been diminished. “It is harder to win,” added John C. P. Goldberg, a law professor at Harvard University. Beginning several decades ago, companies, insurers and others, pointing to instances of excessive jury awards and frivolous lawsuits, pushed state lawmakers to pass measures that would reduce awards and limit filings. Since then, many states have capped awards for noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering, limited punitive damage awards or changed how liability is assessed.

Supporters of the changes say they are not intended to bottle up safety information.

“If anything, plaintiff’s lawyers have become aggressive in finding defective products,” said Victor E. Schwartz, a defense lawyer and an executive of the American Tort Reform Association, an advocacy group. Today, he added, lawyers also can use technological tools like the Internet to spot cases.

But some lawyers say the changed financial calculus has affected the kinds of cases being pursued.

“You cannot afford to take an auto products case unless there is a death or serious injury,” said James E. Butler Jr., a plaintiff’s lawyer whose firm was involved in a case against G.M. that the company later counted as one of those linked to the faulty ignition switch.

In the end, the defect’s public disclosure — and the recall of 2.2 million G.M. vehicles in the United States — was set in motion by a lawsuit filed in Georgia, a state that does not place strict caps on damages in product liability lawsuits.

“It increases the ability of a plaintiff to bring a claim,” said the lawyer, Lance Cooper of Marietta, Ga., who filed a lawsuit in 2011 in the case of 29-year-old Brooke Melton, who died in a Chevrolet Cobalt crash.