VW MASS SUIT BEGINS MONDAY

Some 450,000 car owners have joined first-of-its-kind grouped proceeding

Cto the Federal Court of Justice.

Individual proceedings could then take at least another year — in the court of first instance.

By then, the cars’ market value could have eroded to a negligible amount, making a buyback cheaper for the firm.

To avoid such delays, the VZBV says it is “open” to an out-ofcourt settlement.

“In that case, VW would have to pay a significant sum after all,” said Mueller.

Given the wide variety of cases under the group action umbrella, VW finds a mass settlement “hard to imagine”.

Alongside the grouped proceeding, 61,000 individual suits have been filed in Germany, and some have already led to out-ofcourt settlements. over his role.

In the mass suit, the most important of around 50 questions for judges is whether VW “caused harm” by acting “dishonestly”.

Klaus Mueller of VZBV said he was “convinced” the car firm did, while VW said “clients did not suffer harm”.

“The cars affected are used by millions on the roads without problem,” said VW lawyer Martine de Lind van Wijngaarden.

Even if judges find in favour of plaintiffs, there won’t be an immediate compensation payment.

Rather, every owner registered in the trial will have to claim individually for compensation.

VW thinks a final judgment could arrive in 2023 at the earliest, if the case is appealed all the way joined a first-of-its-kind grouped proceeding, introduced by lawmakers after the “dieselgate” emissions cheating scandal broke in 2015.

Consumer rights group VZBV, representing the plaintiffs, says the German carmaker deliberately harmed buyers by installing motor control software that allowed vehicles to pollute far more on the road than under lab conditions.

The trial is Germany’s largest so far in the tentacular diesel scandal, which last week saw VW chief executive Herbert Diess charged with market manipulation AR behemoth Volkswagen AG (VW) will face a German court on Monday, as hundreds of thousands of owners of manipulated diesel cars demand compensation four years after the country’s largest post-war industrial scandal erupted.

The first hearing in what is likely to be a grinding, years-long trial opens at 10am in Brunswick, around 30km from VW headquarters in the northern city of Wolfsburg.

Around 450,000 people have