Frankfurt (awp/afp) – Customers of manufacturer Mercedes-Benz who are claiming damages in the affair with rigged diesel engines have partially won their case, according to the judgment of a German court on Thursday in one of the many legal aspects of the dieselgate.
The Stuttgart car manufacturer installed “unauthorized defeat devices” that limited the purification of diesel exhaust fumes on certain cars, the court in Stuttgart (west) ruled.
This decision opens the way for individual claims for compensation from customers who claim to have been injured.
However, the Mercedes group indicated that it would appeal the decision.
About 2,800 customers joined this collective action filed in 2021 by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV).
The court rejected certain parts of the complaint, relating in particular to the intentional or unintentional nature of the deception and to the type of models involved.
This verdict has “now set important milestones for damage claims,” the VZBV responded in a press release.
In response to the decision, Mercedes reiterated its position on Thursday according to which “the interpretation of the extremely complex provisions (on the devices in question) was at least defensible at the time and in any case was not made with the intention of acting illegally.”
The consumer association estimated in 2021 the number of Mercedes vehicles affected by CO2 emissions manipulation equipment at “up to 50,000”, i.e. a much smaller scale than in the proceedings it initiated against Volkswagen, the main manufacturer hit by dieselgate.
In this previous class action, the first of its kind in Germany, the consumer protection organization was given a mega lawsuit that ended in 2020 with an out-of-court settlement between Volkswagen and the plaintiffs.
According to the VZBV, almost 250,000 customers received compensation from the manufacturer, for a total of around 750,000 euros.
Volkswagen admitted in September 2015 that it fitted up to 11 million car engines worldwide with software that can manipulate emissions levels, sparking the ‘dieselgate’ scandal.
This extensive affair has given rise to a number of legal actions, civil and criminal, in numerous countries and against various manufacturers.
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