In courts all over Germany VW wrestles with diesel owners. Now, the legal service provider MyRight replaces. He complains for SPIEGEL information for more car owners to around 500 million euros in damages.
VW logo at the company headquarters
Wednesday, 12.12.2018
10:36 clock
Manipulated in the scandal diesel cars comes up Volkswagen a new flood of complaints. The legal service provider MyRight goes to court for more than 18,700 other owners of manipulated cars against the company. On Wednesday, the lawsuit against VW to be submitted to the Regional Court of Brunswick, told the SPIEGEL.
Thus sets the legal platform of the Hamburg-based company Financial Right, which collects claims of diesel owners and thus against VW moves to court, their first lawsuit on top of it. By the end of 2017, around 15,000 car owners had already demanded repayment of the purchase price of their manipulated VW diesel through MyRight. Together with the current lawsuit, the Wolfsburg-based company now has around EUR 1 billion, including interest. So far, no court has yet pronounced a verdict in favor of MyRight, a VW spokesman commented on the new lawsuit.
Recent judgments come MyRight in dispute with VW. So had that District court Augsburg meanwhile decided that already driven by the car owners miles on the repurchased purchase price would not have to be counted. This supports the argumentation of several lawyers who act legally in individual lawsuits or as MyRight with claims collected against the auto company. “In our view, the legal position of consumers has been strengthened,” said MyRight co-founder Jan-Eike Andresen on request.
In the new complaint VW is accused that due to the manipulation of the diesel engines and the real higher than the group specified exhaust emission values, the EU operating license has expired. There is therefore “a relevant value of 0 €”, it says in the 126-page claim, the SPIEGEL present. MyRight demands of VW the new value of the vehicles in the amount of 412 million euros – plus interest.
New ammo for the lawsuit
The European Commission and the Federal Motor Transport Authority have threatened that manipulated diesel cars would be shut down if the owners refuse the software update. This provides new ammunition for all plaintiffs, as well as the increasing number of driving bans in inner cities. Other arguments in MyRight’s new lawsuit are the pretrial detention of Audi’s boss Rupert Stadler and the fine of one billion euros, which has imposed the prosecutor Braunschweig against VW.
The high number of new suiters also shows that interest in fines continues to rise. The lawsuit now filed by MyRight includes all diesel owners who have ceded their claims to the service provider only this year.
At the same time, the company has received new competition: consumers are now one Musterfeststellungsklage about the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband open, by the ADAC is supported. There, the plaintiffs want to establish that VW has done the diesel owners injustice. If they get away with it, however, each plaintiff must claim the respective compensation. Apparently, one fifth of the diesel victims MyRight represents in its new lawsuit are self-employed or smaller companies – they can not take advantage of the consumer-focused new claim form of the designation suit.
If the lawsuit succeeds, MyRight can earn around 30 percent commission. This quite new form of legal dispute, which facilitates plaintiffs without legal protection insurance in court, is under attack. Above all VW criticizes that the assignment of claims is legally not allowed. For the first lawsuit MyRight argues therefore even with the Brunswick court.
The company had one Bias request against the Brunswick judge because she had asked critical questions about the legal services provider’s financing. She had stated that it could be questioned how effectively the VW owners had ceded their claims. This would have given unjustified ammunition to VW, so the criticism of MyRight. Still, this aspect of the dispute is not decided.