Fees Could Become Bone of Contention in Aftermath of VW Accord

Law.com discusses the settlement in the Volkswagen defeat device case with CEI's Center for Class Action Fairness founder Ted Frank. 

Volkswagen, by contrast, settled within a matter of months. The litigation began less than a year ago, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that Volkswagen’s vehicles emitted as much as 40 times the standard for nitrogen oxides.

And unlike Toyota, which never admitted that an electronic defect was to blame for suddenly accelerating vehicles, Volkswagen confessed that it installed a “defeat device” in its clean diesel vehicles to evade emissions tests.

“It was a slam-dunk guarantee settlement,” said class action critic Ted Frank of the Volkswagen deal. Frank, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Class Action Fairness, had unsuccessfully argued for a competitive bidding process in the selection of lead counsel to avoid “windfall fees” in the Volkswagen case.

“Volkswagen has a track record of fighting fee requests that are unreasonable,” Frank said.

Read the full article at Law.com.