Dusseldorf Luxembourg has ruled: The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled in favor of a diesel owner in the Mercedes-Benz dispute. According to this, the car manufacturer has to pay its customer compensation because an illegal defeat device is installed in the exhaust gas cleaning system. The ECJ ruled that the buyer is entitled to compensation if he has suffered a disadvantage as a result of the defeat device.
The Ravensburg district court, which was dealing with the complaint of a Mercedes driver, wanted to have this question clarified by the ECJ. The proceedings are now being referred back to the Ravensburg district court. The court there will now have to deal with the case again after the fundamental decision of the ECJ.
In essence, it is now a question of quantifying the possible damage for the customer. “We still consider the claims asserted against our company as part of diesel customer lawsuits to be unfounded,” said a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz when asked. The affected vehicles are largely stable in value. The spokesman also said that the company continues to believe that there is no illegal defeat device in the case. The Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) did not even recall the vehicle.
The statement by Mercedes-Benz cannot hide the fact that the ECJ has inflicted a serious defeat on the group. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has so far rejected claims for damages. For such claims, the Karlsruhe court assumed that the buyer had been deliberately deceived. Because the car manufacturer could be accused of negligence at best, the plaintiffs usually failed.
The ECJ sees it differently. The car manufacturers could also be liable if they had simply acted negligently without any intention of fraud.
Significantly improved chances of success for lawsuits
The judges in Germany must now implement these guidelines from Luxembourg. Consumer advocates assume that the chances of success for affected diesel drivers have improved massively. “Today’s decision makes it easier than ever to enforce claims for damages because of the emissions scandal,” says Claus Goldenstein, who represents several thousand plaintiffs. “The Federal Court of Justice set comparatively high hurdles. These hurdles are gone now because immoral or intentional damage is no longer important,” says Goldenstein.
Because the ECJ judgment was pending, courts of all instances had put mass diesel proceedings on hold where this question is important. At the BGH alone, more than 1900 revisions and complaints about non-admission are pending, the clear majority had been postponed because of the ECJ proceedings.
The “Diesel Senate” of the BGH has already scheduled a hearing for May 8, in which it intends to discuss the “possible consequences for German liability law” in order to provide the lower instances with guidelines as quickly as possible. Because with the ECJ judgment not all questions have been clarified by a long shot. For example, it is unclear how much money affected car buyers are entitled to.
Decision also relevant for other manufacturers
The background to the proceedings was a claim for damages from Germany against Mercedes-Benz because of a so-called thermal window. Thermal windows are part of the engine control system, which throttle exhaust gas cleaning at cooler temperatures. Car manufacturers argue that this is necessary to protect the engine. “A bogus argument,” says Thorsten Krause from the law firm KAP, which represents a number of diesel plaintiffs. “Thermal windows were not absolutely necessary, but probably just the fastest and cheapest alternative in development,” says Krause.
Environmental organizations also see the thermal window as an instrument that helps to make car emissions appear smaller under test conditions than they are in real traffic. The critics of the thermal window now see themselves confirmed by the ECJ decision. “All temperature-controlled shutdown devices that are activated under normal operating conditions are therefore not permitted,” says Krause.
Thermal windows were also used as standard by other manufacturers. Since the ECJ ruling relates to unlawful defeat devices in general, it could also be transferrable to other functionalities in the exhaust technology of diesel cars, which are currently being scrutinized by the courts.
The German Environmental Aid recently sued the KBA because of the thermal window. In 2016, the KBA allowed Volkswagen to let the manipulated diesel vehicles back on the road – although illegal defeat devices such as the thermal window were still in place. The lobbyists did not want to accept this – and won in the first instance before the Schleswig-Holstein administrative court.
With agency material
More: ECJ declares thermal windows in VW diesel engines inadmissible