Volkswagen Facing Nationwide Lawsuit Over Environmental Emissions Deception

September 22, 2015, 12:15PM. By Lucy Campbell

Seattle, WAFurther to Volkswagen’s admission that it deliberately skirted environmental regulations in its 2009-2015 model year vehicles, and a subsequent recall demanded by the US government to fix the software issues in these cars, a nationwide class action lawsuit has been filed against the automaker.

The lawsuit contends that Volkswagen’s decision to prey on environmentally-conscious consumers who paid a premium of thousands of dollars for a supposedly cleaner-running car, and who received a polluting vehicle instead, is despicable, not to mention in violation of multiple state and federal consumer and environmental laws.

The issue centers around software built into Volkswagen and Audi vehicles. Known as defeat devices, the complaint states that “The defeat devices [Volkswagen] designed and installed work by switching on the full emissions control systems in [the] cars only when the car is undergoing periodic emissions testing. The technology needed to control emissions from Defendant’s cars to meet state and federal emissions regulations reduce their performance, limiting acceleration, torque, and fuel efficiency.”

“To hide this,” the Complaint states, “the defeat device simply shut off most of the emissions control systems in the cars once the car has completed its emissions test.” This resulted “in Defendant’s cars sending up to 40 times as much pollution into the environment as is allowed under the Clean Air Act and state regulations.”
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a Notice of Violation stating that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by including so-called defeat devices in certain diesel passenger cars.

The Volkswagen and Audi model years affected by this issue are: Jetta (Model Years 2009--2015); Beetle (Model Years 2009--2015); Audi A3 (Model Years 2009--2015); Golf (Model Years 2009--2015); Passat (Model Years 2014--2015).