Ten citizens in Oregon have filed several individual lawsuits against Volkswagen relating to the emissions tests cheating case. The six individual lawsuits seek as much as $150,000 in total, with $19,580 to $29,000 for each lawsuit.
Volkswagen has been facing a long line of lawsuits since the company was forced to admit in September 2015 that it installed a cheating software in nearly 600,000 vehicles in the U.S. to trick government emissions tests. The lawsuits are potentially exposing the company to billions of dollars in penalties for clean air violations. The scandal then moved on across the world with more than 11 million vehicles involved in emission cheating.
The six individual lawsuits filed by ten people in Oregon all claim that Volkswagen Group of America intentionally markets some of its diesel vehicles as "clean diesel" vehicles that cost several thousand dollars more than the base model, Koin 6 reported. The company said the "clean diesel" vehicles provide high fuel mileage low emissions.
The lawsuits filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court allege Volkswagen deliberately installed a defeat device on the vehicles so they appear to emit lower pollutants during emissions tests. The suits claim that when not being tested, the vehicles would emit up to 40 times more pollution than is allowed by law.
Some Oregon plaintiffs claim that they would not have purchased the more expensive "clean diesel" vehicles if they had known that the cars emit illegal pollutions.
Oregon lawsuits also claim that Volkswagen misrepresented that the "clean diesel" vehicles possessed characteristcs, ingredients, uses, benefits, or qualities that they did not possess. The lawsuits claim that the carmaker engaged in unfair or deceptive conduct in trade.
A senior lecture at Cornell University's ILR School, Art Wheaton, told Forbes that there will be a very long line of lawyers trying to sue Volkswagen for the next 20 years. The U.S. Justice Department on behalf Environmental Protection Agency in U.S. District Court in Detroit filed a lawsuit seeks $48 billion dollars earlier this month.
Cornell's Wheaton said that each individual state in the U.S. can file lawsuits against Volkswagen for fraud. They can sue the carmaker for advertising a fraudulent product and sold cars knowing its claims were fraudulent. Wheaton said VW's advertising in mail can be a mail fraud. Their TV advertising can be brought to the Federal Communications Commission for advertising fraudulent.
In addition to the Orgeon Lawsuits, the U.S. government filed this week a civil lawsuit against Volkswagen for installing a defeat device that intentionally subverted clean air regulations, Pop Herald reported. The U.S. government alleged that the company deliberately hid details of emission defeat device fitted to nearly 600,000 vehicles.
The U.S. government also alleged that Volkswagen's cars were sold without a valid certificate of conformity issued by the EPA, because the company kept its defeat software secret.
