“This ECJ decision will trigger more mass lawsuits against diesel manufacturers,” say consumer advocates. Peter Kolba. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) lowers the barriers to claims for damages by purchasers of diesel vehicles in case of inadmissible exhaust technology. Car manufacturers can also be held liable if they simply acted negligently without any intention of fraud, Luxembourg judges ruled in a Mercedes case on Tuesday.
This will have a major impact on German and Austrian jurisprudence. Because in the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) plaintiffs only had a chance of compensation if they were deliberately and intentionally deceived by the manufacturer in an immoral way. These strict criteria were only in Scandal engine VW EA189 Comply. The negligent action is now sufficient for the ECJ – which is easier to prove.
Judges in Germany and Austria must now implement these requirements. about this ECJ decisionl to be seen, courts of all instances have filed many diesel lawsuits where this issue matters. Currently, more than 1,900 appeals and complaints of inadmissibility are being processed in the Federal Court of Justice alone, the vast majority of them postponed because of the TJE processes.
O “Diesel SenateThe BGH has already scheduled a hearing for May 8 at which it intends to discuss the “possible consequences for German liability law” in order to provide guidance to lower courts as soon as possible. Because with the judgment of the ECJ not all questions were clarified by far. For example, it’s not clear how much money affected car buyers are entitled to.
The background of the procedure was Claim for Damages of Germany against Mercedes-Benz because of the so-called thermal window. Thermal windows are part of the engine control system, which accelerates the cleaning of exhaust gases at lower temperatures. Car manufacturers argue that this is necessary to protect the engine. Environmental organizations, on the other hand, see it as a tool that helps make cars’ emissions appear lower in test conditions than in real traffic. The ECJ considers these thermal windows to be permissible only within very narrow limits.