A group of South Korean Volkswagen owners is planning to sue the German carmaker in the United States for deceiving them about the emissions test, their legal representative said Tuesday.
About 50 people who own Passat models, made at a U.S.-based production facility in Tennessee, will file a class action lawsuit in the coming weeks in the U.S. where punitive damages are acknowledged.
Meant to punish the offending party for its reckless or unconscionable actions or conduct, punitive damages are considerably or greatly higher than the measurable value of the injury.
“The amount of compensation in punitive damages suit goes up to as high as 10-fold the actual damages incurred,” said Jason Ha, who is representing the plaintiffs. “One of our goals is to prevent Volkswagen Group from discriminating (against) customers here.”
The lawyer said the plaintiffs will continue a two-track lawsuit in South Korea and the U.S.
Another group of hundreds of people sued the German carmaker on Tuesday as well, demanding the contracts they made to buy the cars in question be annulled.
A total of 266 people have filed lawsuits against Volkswagen Group, Audi Volkswagen Korea and local dealers with the Seoul Central District Court since the scandal broke out.
In mid-September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that Volkswagen used software that activates emission controls only when the car is going through official testing to fake test results and pass strict emissions standards.
The world’s No. 1 carmaker admitted to the accusation and decided to recall about 500,000 vehicles in the U.S. alone. It also admitted that more than 10 million cars sold globally might be equipped with the “defeat device.”
The German carmaker officially apologized to its South Korean customers for the scandal on Thursday in major newspapers, vowing to take every possible measure, including a recall, to regain customers’ trust.
In a similar newspaper ad, Audi Korea said that it is making “thorough preparations” for a recall and other possible measures necessary to resolve any problem linked to the software in question.
Earlier this month, the Environment Ministry said that it has launched its own investigation into suspected Volkswagen and Audi models over the potential emissions results manipulation.
Market experts presume that about 120,000 Volkswagen and Audi vehicles might have been manipulated in South Korea by the same software found by the U.S. environment regulators and be subject to a recall.
The next lawsuit will be filed on Oct. 20. (Yonhap)
