A US judge rejected a lawsuit filed against Volkswagen on Thursday in a victory which could save the German automotive giant billions of dollars in payouts.
The ruling could deter dozens of other US states from going after Volkswagen with similar environmental claims following the “dieselgate” emissions scandal which has plagued the car manufacturer for almost two years.
Federal judge Charles Breyer rejected the lawsuit from the US state of Wyoming in a San Francisco court because the so-called Clean Air
Act must be regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rather than the 50 US states.
Volkswagen has already settled a complaint from EPA and has racked up 22.6 billion euros (26.9 billion dollars) in legal costs in North
America.
A portion of that sum already goes to US states where Volkswagen sold diesel cars with manipulation software, which led to higher air pollution in those regions.
The cost of settling lawsuits from individual states would be immense– Wyoming alone was asking for 37,500 dollars for every day that each
car with the illegal emissions levels was on its streets.
At around 2,000 cars in the state, this would have cost Volkswagen 44.9 million dollars per day, and the affected cars were active for several years.
In September 2015, VW admitted that it had for years used software to manipulate diesel emission levels.
The revelation forced it to set aside billions for legal costs and retrofits.
Around 600,000 diesel cars were affected in the US and around 11 million worldwide.
