Can I sue Volkswagen for damage to my health?

Question

Hypothetically, what legal standing would an individual who does not own a Volkswagen car have to sue Volkswagen for damage to health?

As someone who suffers from respiratory issues, it seems that Volkswagen has likely contributed to the decline in my health in some way by having its cars emit 40x the legal limit of some pollutants known to damage human health.

What laws cover this kind of injury and is there any precedence in UK law, e.g. for injury from other passive sources such as tobacco smoking or environmental damage?

Answer 1

You can sue anyone you want. But if you are talking about suing VW because they are one of the thousands of entities that contribute to the overall degeneration of our atmospheric quality, then you would lose.

You'd have to be able to show that VW itself caused your respiratory problem to either exist or that their diesel cars exacerbated a pre-existing condition. The type of testimony this would require would be expert testimony, and you would have the burden of showing that VW was the root cause. This would be impossible. You could show negligence (maybe even gross negligence or intentional misrepresentation), but you could never show causation and likely not even damage (attributable to them). These are the three elements you would need to prove. I would wager you could not even hire an expert that would testify to this, because they would lose all credibility in their field if they said that one car manufacturer had a measurable/quantifiable negative effect on your health. Even if you could, the judge would probably not certify the testimony as expert as it's likely junk science, or, the expert would just be disbelieved. There is no way to accurately measure their complicity in having their cars automatically pass emissions tests. It may be that their cars were still low E, just not to the extent they claimed.

Answer 2

To answer your question in a slightly different direction:

The primary movers who would have a case of action here would be either the federal or states' attorneys general (or both). They are tasked with, among other things, taking actions against companies who do harm to the community as a whole but not necessarily to any one specific individual. Rather than a class action lawsuit, which would still require proving a specific harm, they can take more general action, including prosecuting them criminally for fraud and/or taking them to civil court. They're able to pursue things a bit more removed from direct harm than an individual.

While you would not be directly reimbursed for this, assuming the state AG won the case (or more likely achieved a settlement), that money would pay your state's coffers which would hopefully either slightly reduce your tax burden or slightly increase the services rendered by the state - either way, helping you out, at least indirectly.