On December 3, 2019, the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment, Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Office of Air Quality announced that the application deadlines for two Volkswagen settlement mitigation programs...more
In 2015, when confronted with a United States Environmental Protection Agency Notice of Violation of the Clean Air Act, Volkswagen admitted to installing defeat devices in the diesel engine software of approximately 500,000...more
The headlines generated by the Volkswagen emissions scandal continue to amaze the environmental community and the general public, both here and abroad. The events are shocking in part because they involve a household name in...more
The emissions cheating scandal that recently cost VW $4.3 billion and a mess of criminal indictments isn’t, it seems, confined to the Germans. We heard months ago about a similar probe into Mitsubishi, and yesterday we...more
VW Will Pay $14.7B in Largest FTC False Ad Suit - Volkswagen made a $14.7 billion deal with the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the California Attorney General over charges that the auto...more
News of “Dieselgate” broke in the Fall 2014, when vaunted vehicle-maker Volkswagen was accused of dodging federal emissions laws by rigging its automobiles so they would pass smog tests. The summer of 2015 saw the scandal...more
Today I continue my exploration of the Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1, 1916. Daniel Todman writing in the Financial Times (FT), in an article entitled “Stories of the Somme”, insightfully noted that for all the...more
Proposed settlement filed in Volkswagen class action - The class plaintiffs, the government and VW filed a proposed settlement agreement in court yesterday. I wanted to provide you with a copy of the proposed settlement...more
Tris Coffin heads the Vermont Volkswagen Class Action litigation team at DRM that also includes Directors Bob Luce and Marc Heath. On the evening of April 20, a number of news outlets published stories that Volkswagen...more
One of the areas where my thinking has evolved in the compliance arena is around the area of reputational damage. Of course commentators, such as Andrea Bonime-Blanc, have written and spoken about preventing damage to a...more
Environmental and Policy Focus - Royal Dutch Shell suspends Arctic drilling indefinitely: Washington Post - Sep 28: Royal Dutch Shell announced early on September 28, 2015 that it will indefinitely suspend its Arctic...more
Many Americans listened last week to the admissions by the now former President of Volkswagen that the company had been “dishonest” and had cheated on the U.S. emissions tests. How was this happening at the world’s #1...more
The Volkswagen scandal will be studied for years. One of many themes from the Volkswagen scandal will rest on the complete absence of any commitment to corporate governance. Volkswagen’s weird corporate structure (it is owned...more
Vermont Volkswagen car owners headed by Charlotte resident Robert Turnau have sued Volkswagen companies in Germany and the United States over damages they suffered as a result of the company’s falsification of emissions...more
Ed. Note-The VW scandal is clearly much broader than simply corporate lying about environmental compliance. It is about an entire corporate culture that engaged in, tolerated or consciously disregarded the illegal behavior....more
Things are seriously bad when one of the world’s most respected business focused publications, the Financial Times (FT), asks if the auto “industry faces ‘Libor moment’”? Yet that was a headline yesterday in the lead article...more
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) issuance of a notice of violation last week to Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, and Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (collectively Volkswagen) appears to have further validated EPA’s and...more