New scandal on the horizon in the US automotive sector. After Volkswagen, to end up in the eye of the storm is Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, sued by the US law firm Berman, advertised as "the cleanest and most advanced diesel in the world".
The accusation, also in this case, is that of having used software to fake the values of the exhaust gas emissions of 14 Mercedes models that adopt the proprietary technology for low-emission diesel engines called BlueTEC.
According to the law firm, which filed a lawsuit last February 18 in the District Court of New Jersey, Daimler would in other words have engaged in the same behavior as Volkswagen, falsifying data on diesel engines in order to escape the control of the authorities american.
The German car manufacturer issued a statement in which it defined the allegations made by the law firm as totally unfounded, declaring that it was ready to defend itself before the court.
In Germany, the controversy reached the front pages of the newspapers: "Mercedes used a similar scheme to Volkswagen, polluting and at the same time reaping the economic rewards of an aggressive and deceptive eco-conscious branding," Steve Berman, managing partner, told Handelsblatt by the Hagens Berman studio, specialized in class-action lawsuits.
We recall that the same law firm in 1998 represented 13 US states as deputy federal prosecutor in a class action lawsuit against Philip Morris, obtaining a record settlement of 184 billion dollars. Another famous lawsuit is the one that Hagens Berman filed against Toyota for damages deriving from a malfunction of some models. Also in this case he managed to win, obtaining a compensation equal to 1,6 billion dollars.
The models involved would be the following: diesel Mercedes ML 320, R320, S-Class, ML 350, E-Class, GLK Class, GL 320, GL Class, GLE class, E320, ML Class, Sprinter, S350 and the R-Class.
