Wednesday July 14, 2021
Judgment in the Netherlands
Court awards VW owners compensation for damages
Much like in Germany, vehicle owners in the Netherlands are suing Volkswagen for using cheat software – with success. A court has now awarded the owners of 150,000 cars damages. The company announces the appointment.
Volkswagen has been sentenced to compensate diesel customers in the Netherlands. A court in Amsterdam awarded buyers of new diesel cars whose emissions values had been manipulated by software to be entitled to 3,000 euros each. Buyers of used diesel are to receive 1500 euros each. A total of around 150,000 vehicles are affected by the judgment. The court upheld the collective action brought by the “Car Claim” association against the manufacturers of VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat. The company announced an appeal against the judgment.
A buyer can expect that a car complies with the applicable rules, the court ruled. If that is not the case, then the car is also worth less. The automakers acted illegally by deliberately misleading the regulator and the buyers of the cars.
Almost six years ago, the group admitted that it had manipulated the emission levels of diesel cars using software. On the test bench, this pretended that the vehicles were complying with the emission limits. In normal operation on the roads, however, the cars emitted many times more harmful nitrogen oxide. The reparation of the emissions scandal has cost Volkswagen more than 32 billion euros so far, mainly fines and compensation payments in the USA. Most recently, the carmaker in Italy was sentenced to compensation for more than 63,000 car customers, according to consumer advocates. There, too, the company had declared that it would appeal.
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