Greenberg Gross Files Class Action Against Volkswagen for Emissions Fraud

COSTA MESA — Greenberg Gross LLP has filed a national class action in federal court against Volkswagen for deliberately deceiving consumers by installing software to evade emissions tests and misrepresent emissions of alleged “clean diesel” vehicles sold in the United States.
With this lawsuit, Greenberg Gross brings its broad and impressive experience in high-stakes litigation to the Volkswagen diesel controversy. The growing law firm has triumphed in major class actions recently, including ones involving Lowe’s Home Improvement and the American Automobile Association.
The class action complaint, filed in federal court in Santa Ana, California, accuses Volkswagen of intentionally installing emissions “defeat devices” in diesel vehicles in order to evade federal and California clean air standards.
“Volkswagen arrogantly cheated hundreds of thousands of its own customers out of the clean, efficient vehicles for which they paid a premium,” managing partner Alan A. Greenberg said. “In its quest to be the No. 1 automaker in the world, Volkswagen also cheated everyone around the globe who is forced to inhale the high levels of pollutants spewed out by the supposedly clean diesel engines.”
The company “actively concealed or suppressed these material facts since at least since 2009 in order to profit from the sale of these vehicles, thereby defrauding Plaintiff and consumers,” the complaint states. The lawsuit accuses Volkswagen Group of America Inc., Audi AG, and parent company Volkswagen AG of fraud, false advertising, breach of required warranties, and violations of federal and California statutes. Davis v. Volkswagen Group of America Inc., 8:15-cv-01571 (C.D. Cal., filed Sept. 30, 2015).
Greenberg Gross filed the action on behalf of Allen Davis of Huntington Beach and all other buyers of Volkswagen and Audi diesel vehicles afflicted with the fraudulent “clean diesel” software. Davis owns a 2011 Audi A3 TDI he purchased from a prior owner.
If he and other purchasers had known about the defeat devices, they would have paid less for their vehicles or not bought them at all. But because of Volkswagen’s fraud, their cars have plummeted in value according to the complaint.
Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, admitted September 18 that it had hidden the defeat devices in as many as 11 million Volkswagen and Audi cars and sports wagons manufactured from 2009 to 2015. “Our company was dishonest, with the EPA and the California Air Resources board, and with all of you and in my German words, we have totally screwed up,” said Michael Horn, chief executive of the Volkswagen Group of America.
The illicit software rigs the affected cars’ and wagons’ emission control systems to operate properly only during official emissions testing. On the open road, the defeat devices turn off the control systems, which causes the vehicles to discharge as much as 40 times the amount of air pollutants allowed by federal law.

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