\n<\/p>\n
Car manufacturers decided they would rather cheat to prioritise \u201ccustomer convenience\u201d and sell cars than comply with the law on deadly pollutants, the first day of the largest group action trial in English legal history has been told.<\/p>\n
More than a decade after the original \u201cdieselgate\u201d scandal broke, lawyers representing 1.6 million diesel car owners in the UK argue that manufacturers deliberately installed software to rig emissions tests.<\/p>\n
They allege the \u201cprohibited defeat devices\u201d could detect when the cars were under test conditions and ensure that harmful NOx emissions were kept within legal limits, duping regulators and drivers.<\/p>\n
Should the claim be upheld, estimated damages could exceed \u00a36bn. The three-month hearing that opened at London\u2019s high court on Monday will focus on vehicles sold by five manufacturers \u2013 Mercedes, Ford, Renault, Nissan and Peugeot\/Citro\u00ebn \u2013 from 2009. In \u201creal world\u201d conditions, when driven on the road, lawyers argue, the cars produced much higher levels of emissions.<\/p>\n
The judgment on the five lead defendants will also bind other manufacturers including Jaguar Land Rover, Vauxhall\/Opel, Volkswagen\/Porsche, BMW, FCA\/Suzuki, Volvo, Hyundai-Kia, Toyota and Mazda, whose cases are not being heard to reduce the case time and costs.<\/p>\n
Opening the case for the claimants, Thomas de la Mare KC said: \u201cEach player in the industry basically took a conscious decision that customer convenience, which helped the industry sell more cars, was more important than reducing pollutants causing death.\u201d<\/p>\n
In written submissions, the claimants quoted a Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air report that found excess NOx emissions had caused 124,000 premature deaths in the UK and Europe between 2009 and 2024.<\/p>\n
De la Mare told the high court levels of emissions could have easily been reduced had vehicles had larger tanks for AdBlue \u2013 an additive that cuts NOx in diesel vehicles \u2013 and asked customers to refill them. Instead, he said: \u201cThey have basically said the concern about making these cars sellable by removing these inconveniences is so strong \u2026 that we would rather cheat than comply with the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lead barrister also told the judge, Mrs Justice Cockerill, that manufacturers were trying to argue that numerous prior dieselgate rulings abroad, including in the US and European court of justice, did not apply to the UK. He said: \u201cOur position is broadly that we will rely on foreign regulatory decisions as a matter of fact, rather than an opinion on law.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the defendants\u2019 argument meant that \u201cmainland GB becomes a sort of defeat device Brexit Island \u2026 But Northern Ireland is applying case law that you\u2019re being asked to put in the bin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Internal training and briefing documents from Ford in 2010 on defeat devices showed that \u201cthe manufacturers could and did understand the law exactly as we do now\u201d, De la Mare said.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the defendants will make opening statements later this week. The car manufacturers deny having used prohibited defeat devices.<\/p>\n
In written submissions, lawyers for Renault said the case was \u201criddled with errors and misunderstandings, especially about the design and operation of the vehicles\u2019 emission control systems\u201d while Ford\u2019s said it was \u201cscientifically illiterate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mercedes said the claimants case was \u201cobsessively focused\u201d on NOx pollution rather than other emissions, and did not \u201cacknowledge the complexity\u201d of diesel engineering. Lawyers for Nissan said the case\u2019s central legal premise was \u201can untenably broad reading of defeat device\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The main trial, establishing the evidence, is expected to conclude before Christmas, with a break before legal arguments are heard in March 2026. A judgment is expected next summer, with a further trial for possible compensation following.<\/p>\n Adam Kamenetzky, from south London, a lead claimant among the 1.6 million owners, told the Guardian outside court: \u201cFor the first time, certainly in the UK if not in any jurisdiction, the evidence is actually being made public.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these allegations are borne out, consumers were deceived at the point of sale, and there needs to be action taken to prevent this kind of deception being built into cars.\u201d<\/p>\n Clean air campaigners including Mums for Lungs and Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose daughter Ella\u2019s death was the first to be officially linked to air pollution, demonstrated outside court.<\/p>\n Adoo-Kissi-Debrah said that \u201cillegal pollution from diesel vehicles has caused thousands of premature deaths in the UK,\u201d adding that she hoped for a \u201cday of reckoning\u201d over the use of the fuel.<\/p>\n The landmark claims have been brought by more than 20 law firms, led by Leigh Day and Pogust Goodhead. Leigh Day\u2019s senior partner Martyn Day said the claims, \u201cif proven, would demonstrate one of the most egregious breaches of corporate trust in modern times\u201d.<\/p>\n Alicia Alinia, the chief executive of Pogust Goodhead, said the case would go \u201cthe heart of corporate accountability and environmental justice\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Car manufacturers decided they would rather cheat to prioritise \u201ccustomer convenience\u201d and sell cars than comply with the law on deadly pollutants, the first day of the largest group action trial in English legal history has been told. More than a decade after the original \u201cdieselgate\u201d scandal broke, lawyers representing 1.6 million diesel car owners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[4291,6067,1689,10562,3157,11095,16257,191,1545,175,5087,2315,2131],"class_list":{"0":"post-27825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-automotive","9":"tag-carmakers","10":"tag-cars","11":"tag-cheat","12":"tag-chose","13":"tag-comply","14":"tag-dieselgate","15":"tag-emissions","16":"tag-industry","17":"tag-law","18":"tag-sell","19":"tag-told","20":"tag-trial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}