Volkswagen is facing its biggest legal challenge in Germany costing 3.3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) right after lawsuits have been filed in the US. The issue is still about the company's cover-up of its polluting diesel engine.
278 institutional investors from around the world have already filed a case at the Braunschweig Regional Court. According to their lawyer, Andreas Tilp, VW has failed to publish information regarding the emission scandal in a timely manner. He added that the company consistently denied any settlement deals and also refused to waive the statute-of-limitation defense until this moment, as per Bloomberg.
Volkswagen had already admitted that it installed a software on its diesel cars to try and cheat emission testing. This scandal has been all over the global car industry. There are already 65 cases that are on hold in Braunschweig regarding the issue as well as several US lawsuits and criminal probes in other countries.
According to the New York Times, Volkswagen has been facing a steep decline in its sales in America. They are now in talks with the Justice Department as well as the Environmental Protection Agency regarding the penalties to pay in order to equip diesel cars with software designed to avoid emission test.
A case was also filed against the company for wrongful dismissal of its employees. Daniel Donovan, a former Electronic Discovery Manager in Volkswagen, has just filed the case this month. His termination was due to his refusal to take part in the plan of the company's IT department to limit any access to the company's file after the EPA lawsuit came out, as reported by The Verge.
The complainants of the case against VW are investors from all over the world which also included 17 German investment management companies as well as insurance companies. Tilp filed the first shareholders case against VW last October 1. He asked the court to open up the test-case proceedings and if granted, all the capital-market cases will be heard together in a special procedure in Braunschweig Higher Regional Court of Lower Saxony.
