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DAIMLER

First investor complaint filed against Daimler over ‘dieselgate’

A law firm said on Saturday it had lodged the first investor complaint in Germany demanding compensation from car manufacturer Daimler over the "dieselgate" scandal.

Published: 23 June 2018 18:08 CEST
First investor complaint filed against Daimler over 'dieselgate'
Shareholders visit a showroom as part of the German luxury car manufacturer Daimler's annual general meeting in Berlin in April. Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
The complaint, filed Friday at the Stuttgart Regional Court by German law firm Tilp, accuses Daimler of “various market manipulations” since 2014 and having ignored “the huge risks associated with the installation of a banned device in its vehicles” to deceive controls on nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, lawyer Andreas Tilp said in a statement.
 
The scandal emerged when the Volkswagen group admitted in 2015 to installing so-called “defeat devices” in some 11 million diesels worldwide that made them seem less polluting in lab tests than they actually were on the road.
 
The affected vehicles involved VW's own-brand cars, but also those made by Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat.
 
Tilp cited an interview given in September 2015 at the height of the scandal by Dieter Zetsche, boss of Daimler, in which he said that “unlike Volkswagen, Daimler has not installed fraudulent software in its vehicles”.
 
However, the parent company of Mercedes found itself embroiled in the global scandal after the top brand recalled 774,000 vehicles across Europe with software capable of distorting emissions, according to a June 11 report by German transport ministry.
 
The firm calculated that shares dropped by at least 12.5 percent, which could lead to claims “in billions” against the manufacturer. It said it expects many more shareholders to join the claim.
 
Tilp currently represents more than 2,000 plaintiffs, made up of private and institutional shareholders, in a 5.4 billion euro damages claim against Volkswagen over dieselgate.

POLLUTION

‘Infringement on air quality’: EU court slams Germany for pollution in cities

The EU's top court ruled on Thursday that Germany continually violated upper limits for nitrogen dioxide, a polluting gas from diesel motors that causes major health problems, over several years.

Published: 3 June 2021 11:35 CEST
'Infringement on air quality': EU court slams Germany for pollution in cities
Cars sit in traffic in Stuttgart's Hauptstätter Straße in July 2020. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sebastian Gollnow

Germany infringed air quality rules “by systematically and persistently exceeding” the annual nitrogen dioxide limit in 26 out of 89 areas from 2010 to 2016, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in its ruling.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, referred the matter to the ECJ in 2018 after almost a decade of warnings that went unaddressed.

The decision against Europe’s top economy echoes a ruling targeting France in October 2019 after the commission stepped up its anti-pollution fight in the wake of the so-called “Dieselgate” scandal that erupted in 2015 with revelations about Germany’s Volkswagen.

The motors caught up in the scandal — in which automakers installed
special emission-cheating devices into their car engines — are the main emitters of nitrogen oxides that the European Environment Agency says are responsible for 68,000 premature deaths per year in the EU.

READ ALSO: Five things to know about Germany’s dieselgate scandal

Nitrogen dioxide is toxic and can cause significant respiratory problems as one of the main constituents of traffic-jam smog.

Under EU rules, member countries are required to keep the gas to under 40 micrograms per cubic metre — but that level is often exceeded in many traffic-clogged European cities.

The judgement opens the way to possible sanctions at a later stage. However the air quality throughout much of Germany has improved in the last five years, particularly during the shutdowns in the pandemic.

The environment ministry said that 90 cities exceeded national pollution limits in 2016 — the final year covered by the court ruling. By 2019, the number had fallen to 25 and last year, during the coronavirus outbreak, it was just six.

The case involved 26 areas in Germany, including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart as well as urban and rural areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, Mainz, Worms/Frankenthal/Ludwigshafen and Koblenz/Neuwied.

“Furthermore, Germany infringed the directive by systematically and
persistently exceeding, during that period, the hourly limit value for NO2 in two of those zones” — the Stuttgart area and the Rhine-Main region.

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