Kaye Scholer Represents Investors in Volkswagen Diesel Emissions Litigation
Deminor Recovery Services (DRS) has engaged a Kaye Scholer team of Frankfurt-based lawyers to represent two groups of investors in litigation against Volkswagen AG in the District Court of Brunswick, Lower Saxony, Germany. The two lawsuits, announced September 20, 2016 involve Volkswagen’s high-profile diesel emissions scandal and the resulting loss in value these investors incurred in their Volkswagen shares.
The investors—one group of more than 200 investment funds and the other group a set of private investors—have collectively suffered losses worth hundreds of millions of euros on purchases of Volkswagen securities. They are seeking compensation for those losses due to what they say was the company’s failure to inform them in a timely and accurate way about the use of defeat devices in various car models and the resulting impact of that failure on the company’s earnings, outlook and financial situation.
DRS is one of the leading European companies focused on services in the field of shareholder engagement, investor protection, recovery of investment losses and corporate governance.
Kaye Scholer has been monitoring prospective litigation related to the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal and is an emerging thought leader on the topic. Frankfurt-based Litigation counsel Alexander Druckenbrodt was the first to publish an article on the changed legal situation after the abolishment of the special rules on limitation in the German Securities Trading Act. Now, the general rules on limitation apply to all claims that were not time-barred when the new law came into force. As a consequence, Druckenbrodt stated that claims regarding VW’s false and/or omitted emissions statements would not become time-barred on September 18, 2016, one year after the EPA’s notice of violation to VW was made public. That article appeared in Neue Juristische Wochenschrift—NJW, a major German law journal, in December 2015. In September 2016, Bloomberg interviewed Druckenbrodt for its “Imaginary VW Deadline Prompts Flood of Real Investor Lawsuits” article.
Litigation partner Dr. Michael Weigel is leading the Frankfurt team, which consists of Druckenbrodt, associate Maximilian Reichl and Finance partner Ingrid Kalisch.
» Read Deminor’s press release.