«Dieselgate»
The US Supreme Court cancels VW in proceedings
The Supreme Court has rejected two motions by the Volkswagen Group in the “Dieselgate” scandal. Photo: Swen Pförtner / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Volkswagen wanted to bring two outstanding cases in the “Dieselgate” scandal from the Supreme Court. The latter rejected the applications without giving any reason.
The Volkswagen Group has failed in its attempt to bring two pending proceedings in the “Dieselgate” scandal for manipulated emissions values before the US Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court dismissed the VW motions to review the cases on Monday in Washington without a reason. The German car company had hoped to have decisions from lower instances overturned by the highest court and thus avert possible further penalties.
In September 2015, under pressure from the US environmental authorities, VW admitted that it had manipulated the exhaust technology of diesel cars for years with special software. The group has already booked costs of more than 30 billion euros because of the emissions scandal – most of it for fines and compensation payments in the USA. Nevertheless, there are still some proceedings in which individual districts and states are trying to get more money from VW.
The specific cases that the automaker wanted to bring to the Supreme Court are about lawsuits from Ohio as well as from Florida and Utah counties. At times it seemed as if VW could face further major financial risks, as regional catalogs of fines provide for horrific fines. However, VW recently succeeded in settling two similar proceedings in the states of Montana and New Hampshire for a relatively small total of around 1.5 million dollars.
The decision of the Supreme Court does not change the validity of Volkswagen’s arguments, the company announced. VW will continue to vigorously defend itself against the lawsuits. The group is also of the opinion that the remaining claims have already been settled by penalties and compensation that it had to pay in the “Dieselgate” affair for violating the nationwide US air pollution law “Clean Air Act”. Several other US courts have come to this assessment.