The Case

The law firms Nieding+Barth and MüllerSeidelVos are cooperating to help aggrieved parties in the matter involving manipulations in diesel vehicles of the Volkswagen Group to assert claims for compensation. On the one hand, we offer to file individual suits against VW, and on the other there is the opportunity for aggrieved parties to participate in a model case under the Capital Markets Model Case Act (=KapMuG).
 


Together, the firms possess extensive expertise and thus are able to ensure that claims of aggrieved parties are asserted in the best possible way.



Persons eligible to assert a claim are investors who acquired securities after the failure to make a public statement (ad-hoc disclosure) in breach of the duty of disclosure and who, at the time of the publication or the time at which the insider information became known by other means still held the securities ("bought too expensively") or had acquired securities before the issuer failed in its duty of disclosure and who then sold the securities up to the point in time of the publication or any other way in which the knowledge entered the public domain ("sold too cheaply").



What are the precise allegations Volkswagen AG is facing?

It was established that the German car manufacturer had installed manipulative software in its diesel vehicles. The software detects when a vehicle is in a workshop and on the test bench. These circumstances are identified using a combination of different parameters. For example, the accelerator position is combined with the unchanging steering angle or values from ESC. If the software detects that the vehicle is on the test bench, the engine switches to the "clean mode". This entails adjusting fuel injection timing, airflow and combustion stroke to achieve better emission values and comply with the relevant emission standards. The software brought about emission values that were compliant with US standards. In actual fact, the emission values exceeded the standard by up to a factor of 35. The software is named "Defeat Device" and was installed in type EA 189 diesel engines with 1.6 and 2.0 litre engine capacities in models manufactured between 2009 and 2015.