VW Tries to Ditch Emissions Class Action Filed By Previous Car Owners

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Volkswagen has tried to ditch another emissions class action lawsuit, this time filed by drivers who sold their cars before the scandal broke in which the company admitted to using software to defraud emissions regulators.

Reportedly, the company used this technology in diesel vehicles made between 2009 and 2015.

Volkswagen claims that these drivers weren’t affected by the cars’ decreased value. The company made this argument during a Friday hearing when it made a bid to dismiss the emissions class action lawsuit.

According to one of Volkswagen’s attorneys, the customers who had sold their Volkswagen vehicles before the emissions scandal broke had failed to prove that they were injured by the scandal because the profit from their sale was not impacted.

The VW attorney further said that the drivers in the proposed VW class action had “fully recouped any value they thought they were getting,” and the drivers’ attempt to recuperate compensation from Volkswagen amounted to an attempt at a “double recovery.”

The drivers who had sold their vehicles before the scandal broke first filed their emissions class account lawsuit in August 2017, as part of the multidistrict litigation that formed after Volkswagen announced that it had made a practice of defrauding emissions regulators.

The drivers had claimed that they were financially injured by Volkswagen because they purchased their vehicles from VW specifically because they wanted to purchase a “clean diesel” vehicle, but discovered that they had been denied the benefits of the vehicle they thought they were purchasing.

Additionally, these drivers alleged that they paid a premium for the vehicles especially because they were priced higher than less environmentally friendly vehicles.

Volkswagen did reach a series of settlement deals with some customers in the multidistrict litigation, though drivers who had sold their vehicles or ended their leases before the scandal broke were not included in the settlements.

Supporting his argument that drivers who sold their vehicles or ended their leases did not have a claim of injury, VW’s attorney noted that the purpose of these settlement deals was to provide financial incentives to get drivers to take the vehicles off the road, as their actual emissions did not comply with the Clean Air Act.

However, counsel for the drivers fired back by saying that the drivers who had already sold their vehicles or ended their lease had in fact been injured, because they paid roughly $6,000 more for their “clean diesel” cars than they would have for another car, or at least paid for the promised “clean diesel” feature.

Plaintiffs’ counsel went on to argue that the fact that the drivers in the proposed Class had already sold their vehicles was irrelevant in determining the injury done to them by Volkswagen, noting that vehicles depreciate in value as soon as they are taken out of the dealership, so when they re-sold the cars for a lower price, they were not regaining the money they had spent to purchase the car.

The VW drivers are represented by Steve W. Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and by Celeste H. G. Boyd of The Paynter Law Firm PLLC.

The instant VW Class Action Lawsuit is Nemet, et al. v. Volkswagen Group of America Inc., et al., Case No. 3:17-cv-04372, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Volkswagen MDL is In re: Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” Marketing, Sales Practices and Product Liability Litigation, Case No. 3:15-md-02672, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Jan. 15, 2019, former VW car owners who say they overpaid for their diesel vehicles faceanother motion to dismisstheir Volkswagen emissions cheating class action lawsuit.