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05/26.2020
Dieselgate L German courts have ordered Volkswagen to reimburse part of a customer who bought a car fitted with a fake diesel engine. The ruling is expected to influence tens of thousands of proceedings, five years after the scandal broke out.
By equipping its cars with software capable of making them appear less polluting than they actually are, the German automobile group “knowingly and systematically deceived for several years” the authorities “with a view to profitability”, explained the judge Stephan Seiters. Volkswagen will now “offer” amicable solutions to settle “a large part of the 60,000 pending individual proceedings,” the group said in a statement.
The judges of the Court Federal Republic of Germany (BGH) notably considered that the purchase of a car equipped with a rigged engine constituted damage in itself, even if, as VW had argued, the vehicle remained “usable”. This is the first notable legal setback for the auto giant in Germany in this scandal that has plunged the German auto industry into a historic crisis. ats / afp
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