IT SEEMS TO HAVE TAKEN an extraordinarily long time, but legal cases like these don’t move quickly. Volkswagen Group has reached a comprehensive in-principle settlement with the class action plaintiffs in Australia. This is a significant step towards fully resolving the diesel lawsuits in Australia, subject to approval by the Federal Court of Australia. Volkswagen views the in-principle settlements as a further step towards overcoming the diesel issue.
Settlement of the customer class-action lawsuits
The class action lawsuits filed on behalf of Australian customers relate to approximately 100,000 Australian EA189 vehicles. If all affected vehicles participate, each of these customers can expect a payment per vehicle of approximately A$1400 (about EUR 870), on average.
Undoubtedly, some people will think that a fairly paltry sum, but in our opinion (and it’s only an opinion), VW has acted honourably and worked with the various authorities to bring this issue to a satisfactory conclusion. As far as we can see, owners are not hugely impacted by the issues; there is no financial disadvantage, since second-hand diesel Volkswagen values do not appear to have been affected, and rectification has been carried out by VW at no cost (other than perhaps a little inconvenience) to owners.
Another element to the whole mess is that VW Australia was caught up in circumstances well beyond its control, and has paid a large and expensive penalty for the actions of its parent company (by our calculations, the payout to customers works out at $14 million, but that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what it has cost VW locally).
The settlement, on a no-admissions basis, concerns five class-action lawsuits covering all affected vehicles in Australia. The settlement has to be confirmed by the Federal Court of Australia and a timetable has been set by the Court for the necessary steps to occur. Volkswagen expects the proceedings will be concluded in 2020.
Update regarding the dispute with the ACCC
Discussions regarding an in-principle settlement of the civil suit by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) against Volkswagen are close to finalisation and a resolution between the parties is expected shortly. The details are confidential at this time.