A case of tens of thousands of Dutch car owners about the fraudulent software at Volkswagen will start at the court in Amsterdam on Wednesday.
The lawsuit should clarify whether owners are entitled to compensation because their cars contained software that manipulated harmful gas emissions. The scandal surrounding the cheating software came to light in 2015. Diesel cars from the Volkswagen Group performed better during emission tests due to the software and were thus known to be cleaner than they actually were.
At the end of last year, the European Court of Justice ruled after a long legal battle that Volkswagen has acted in breach of European regulations. That statement made it possible for individual car owners to go after compensation. The case that is now in Amsterdam against Volkswagen, software supplier Bosch, importer Pon and Dutch car dealers, has been brought by the Car Claim Foundation. He says that more than 180,000 motorists have joined the mass claim.
Current situation of cars
The central question, according to the Car Claim Foundation, is whether the owners would also have bought their cars if they had known about the hidden defects. The judge is also looking at whether diesels from Volkswagen, Audi, Seat and Skoda still contain prohibited instruments with which the emissions are manipulated. “After a long litigation, it will become clear what duped car owners in the Netherlands are entitled to”, says board member Guido van Woerkom of the foundation. “This can range from the right to compensation to the right to return the tampered diesel to the dealer for a refund of the purchase price.”
The court in Amsterdam has set aside three days for the substantive handling of the case. The verdict will probably not follow until later this year.