Volkswagen not only has to pay damages to a customer whose car has been affected by the VW diesel scandal: the group also has to bear the costs incurred when borrowing for the purchase, the BGH ruled.
VW not only has to pay damages to damaged diesel buyers. The company now has to reimburse a customer for the cost of financing the car because she took out a loan to buy the car. That was decided by the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe.
Financing by home loan
In the specific case, the plaintiff had bought a used VW Golf Diesel from a car dealership in 2013. To finance the car, she signed a loan agreement with the VW bank and borrowed more than 3,000 euros. Later it turned out that the manipulated EA 189 diesel engine was installed in the Golf, which only complied with the prescribed exhaust gas values on the test bench, but not in road traffic. After the diesel scandal became known, she returned the Golf and demanded compensation. That was awarded to her – after deducting the interim mileage. In addition, the VW customer demanded the interest she had paid on the financing loan. This was already awarded to her in the lower court, but Volkswagen appealed to the BGH on an appeal. This has now made the final decision. Regarding the reasons for the judgment, the chairman of the BGH judge Stephan Seiters said that in the event of immoral damage, the claim for damages would also include these costs: “The buyer is to be treated as if it had not been purchased.”
A precedent ruling by the BGH?
To what extent the judgment can also be transferred to other VW customers, the plaintiff and defendant disagree. According to the purchaser’s lawyer, Florian Rosing, the BGH ruling is significant for thousands of customers, as the majority of car purchases were financed by loans. It is about an interest refund of several thousand euros on average. VW announced, however, that the BGH judgment could not be applied to all financed vehicle purchases. Most of the VW Bank loan agreements contained a “documented right of return” whereby the customer could return the vehicle at an agreed price at the end of the loan period. The BGH did not currently have to decide on the interest claim for these contracts. So far, courts have decided differently whether the claim for damages also includes the financing interest. Ref. VI ZR 274/20 With information from Klaus Hempel, ARD legal editors
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