A request for approval for a NIS 300 million class action suit against Volkswagen and Champion Motors was filed today at the Tel Aviv District Court. The suit involves the fabrication of data about pollution emissions from Volkswagen cars.
In his request, the man who filed the suit, Ben Zion Hershkovitz, who owns a Volkswagen car, terms the affair "one of the worst cases of fraud - if not the worst - in the history of the global auto market."
Through his lawyers, Advocates Edan Aiden, David Tirosh, and Idan Dayan, the prospective claimant is asking the court to order Volkswagen to recall its vehicles in order to remove the fraudulent software. He is also asking the court to order compensation for the vehicle owners for damage during the period of time in which they drove the polluting vehicles without being aware of the pollution. He accuses the companies of being in complete violation of their undertaking and declaration about the vehicles' emissions, and accuses them of violating autonomy of the will.
The request further states, "In the event that pollution values without the fraudulent software deviate from the stipulations of Israeli law, the respondent should be ordered to repurchase the car from the group according to the known price list when the test was conducted."
The request goes on to say that if the air pollution values do not deviate from the stipulations of Israeli law, the respondent should be ordered to compensate the members of the group for the reduced value of the vehicle according to the level of pollution found, and in accordance with the findings of the tests to be conducted after the software is removed.
The affair became known when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a dramatic announcement accusing Volkswagen of producing and installing special fraudulent computer software for measuring the level of air pollution emitted from the diesel models of the vehicles it manufactures.
This sophisticated software is capable of distinguishing when vehicles are undergoing an air pollution test. The software activates special equipment designed to reduce the level of air pollution emitted by vehicles only during testing, while the equipment is deactivated during normal driving, raising the air pollution levels emitted by the vehicles to 40 times the permitted level.
The Volkswagen group admitted producing and marketing vehicles with the fraudulent software, and later also admitted that other Volkswagen group subsidiaries took part in the fraud. First, Audi admitted that 2.1 million of its vehicles sold included the software, and Skoda later admitted that 1.2 million of its diesel cars sold all over the world included the software.
Champion Motors, which imports vehicles from the Volkswagen group, published the following announcement after the affair was exposed: "Pursuant to the manufacturer's statements in recent days concerning the measuring of pollutant emissions, what is involved is some of the diesel engines from the previous generation."
In other words, the respondent does not deny that it sold vehicles in Israel containing the fraudulent software. On the contrary, the working of the announcement indicates that the respondent is in effect admitting it sold such vehicles, but says that these were sold "in the past," and that it is now checking the exact number of these vehicles that were sold.
The request filed with the court alleges that the factual basis underlying its request is indisputable.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 30, 2015
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