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Volkswagen Sued For Violating State Environmental Statutes With Dieselgate (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the far-from-over dept.

The attorneys general of New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland are suing Volkswagen for violating state environmental regulations with its diesel emissions cheating scandal. The states say that the car company has violated their air quality laws, combined with some sort of anti-fraud measure for the defeat mechanisms to bypass emissions testing. The move comes after many states agreed to a $14.7 billion settlement for violating consumer protection and EPA and California state environmental regulations. The Verge reports: "Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche defrauded thousands of Massachusetts consumers, polluted our air, and damaged our environment and then, to make matters worse, plotted a massive cover-up to mislead environmental regulators," said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in a statement. This was echoed by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who released his own statement saying "the allegations against Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche reveal a culture of deeply-rooted corporate arrogance, combined with a conscious disregard for the rule of law and the protection of public health and the environment."

5 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Pierce the corporate veil by hwstar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For blatant environmental disregard such as this, the corporation should not offer protection to the officers and directors. The corporate veil should be pierced, and the state should go after the officers and directors both criminally and civilly. The corporate protection from liability should just be there to protect against legal action arising from unforeseen circumstances in the evolution of a company. In this case, the emissions rules were purposefully disregarded and, there should be a heavy price to pay for that.

  2. Cash Grab by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure, what VW did was flaky, bad, evill, and so on. But now we are getting into the "obligitory" cash grab, none of these law suites will result in resources to address "climate change" or give VW owners more than a cupon for a Big Mac.

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    1. Re:Cash Grab by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

      But now we are getting into the "obligitory" cash grab, none of these law suites will result in resources to address "climate change" or give VW owners more than a cupon for a Big Mac.

      Well, if you'd been following this story you'd know that owners' claims have already been dealt with as part of a fifteen billion (or put another way 6% of the company's annual revenues) settlement. So VW owners' interests are no longer at issue. The same settlement included 2 dollars for clean car research -- although technically that's not a fine, since the products of that research would belong to VW. It also included 2.7 million dollars to the EPA for violating US Federal law. That does NOT settle claims by US States for violating their laws.

      Before I continue, let's put these numbers in context: 10.2 in owner compensation + 2.7 in Federal fines. The context is this: Volkwagen Group has annual revenues of 234 billion dollars and normally keeps over twenty billion dollars in cash on hand. It's enough money to hurt, but it's still pocket change.

      Now in the US states are separate legal entities who can make and enforce their own laws. And this wasn't just a case of the company acting sloppily, or an individual rogue actor, or some weird arcane rule that could be easily overlooked. It was clearly a deliberate company strategy to commit consumer and regulatory fraud in order to gain a market advantage over its law-abiding competitors. It got caught, so now the company has to run the gantlet and take it's wrist slaps from every jurisdiction it broke the law in. If it dies of acute wrist trauma, well it's not as if the company didn't know what it was doing. It took the risk that it could get away with it and it lost. End of story. If they go out of business it's hardly an excessive result given their baldly criminal intentions.

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  3. Dear Editors by Digital+Mage · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please stop using the word "-gate" on any story that has some sort of scandal. Watergate was over 40 years ago....LET IT GO! and just use the word scandal.

  4. Re:Test mode all the time? by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Informative

    The test mode cuts the performance about 20%. IOW, the poor bastards bought a real POS.

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