Ansrüche Geschädigter Autokäufer sind noch nicht verjährt

Current ruling by the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court on the VW emissions scandal.

In the emissions scandal Diesel buyers who have suffered damage and who purchased their vehicles after 2015 can still assert their claims because their claims for damages have not expired. This legal opinion is being adopted by more and more courts - most recently by the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court. The 21st Civil Chamber awarded our client compensation, even though he only purchased his VW diesel in 2016.

Even if Volkswagen never tires of claiming that buyers of VW diesels with the EA 189 engine are shutdown devices in the engine control system, proceedings in the emissions scandal usually end with the car company being ordered to take back the vehicles and pay damages for intentionally causing immoral damage. This was also the case before the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court (July 10, 2020, case number 2-21 O 2/19). The court assessed the test bench recognition ("switching logic") as a particularly reprehensible form of consumer deception and awarded the buyer of a VW Golf with the Euro 5 emissions standard damages in accordance with Section 826 of the German Civil Code. After deducting compensation for use for the kilometers driven, our client was awarded a claim to payment of around 12,500 euros plus tortious interest in the judgment of July 10, 2020.

The limitation period has not yet begun

What makes this case particularly interesting is that the plaintiff had only purchased the vehicle in 2016, after the first information about emissions manipulation in VW diesels had circulated. Volkswagen, the claims are time-barred. The buyer of the Golf could have known about the “switching logic” since 2015, due to a ad hoc announcement of the group and the subsequent media coverage. This means that the three-year limitation period would have expired at the end of 2018.

The Frankfurt Civil Chamber did not follow this argument. Above all, however, it explained that the three-year standard limitation period according to Section 195 of the German Civil Code in conjunction with Section 199, Paragraph 1 of the German Civil Code had not yet begun at the time the action was filed in 2019.

Information from Volkswagen and media reports do not constitute “positive knowledge”

According to the court, the prerequisite for the start of the limitation period is positive knowledge of the circumstances that justify the claim for damages - and the plaintiff did not have this. This is not changed by various media reports in which, among other things, the sixth generation Golf was named as the affected vehicle model, nor by the information published in various print and online media at the beginning of October 2015 about a website on which the affected vehicles are listed. The buyer of the VW Golf did not have to take note of ad hoc reports that were not addressed to him. Nor was it his duty to actively participate in the Volkswagen Customer service to inquire whether his vehicle is equipped with manipulation software. In this respect, there is no gross negligent ignorance.

"We welcome this ruling! We were able to obtain good compensation for our client, and the court has made it clear that the vague statements made by Volkswagen when the emissions scandal became known were completely inadequate. Diesel buyers could not have known whether the vehicles they purchased were equipped with fraudulent software. Therefore, the limitation period for their claims for damages could not have started in 2015. On the subject of "purchase with knowledge", more and more courts are now making clear decisions in the interests of consumers: in addition to the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court, for example, the Cologne, Oldenburg and Hamm Higher Regional Courts. This important issue is also pending before the Federal Court of Justice. We assume that the Senate will provide clarity for thousands of affected drivers in the proceedings on July 28, 2020."

Partner Dr. Marco Rogert