141–150 of 227 posts
No. Nothing will happen to top executives. There's a lot of insight as to why from "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives"
You must be mistaking them for US banking executives.
Don't be surprised when you get the same results.
I was watching a german program on the VW scandal and was surprised to learn that the German government allowed VW to issue a software patch to correct the problem instead of offering to repair or compensate owners for the cars they purchased. Even with the software patch the vehicles still released emissions that were well above the norm. Also, I don't believe any VW executives have ever been charged in Germany.
Are the emission standards in the US equivalent to those in Germany? From what I recall, the US has tougher standards. Granted, the cars will still be polluting, but they aren't technically illegal; in the US they are illegal to use.
However, legally the cars are only required to meet emissions limits in test conditions, and the rules allow for emissions control devices to be disabled if necessary "to protect the engine". So it's not clear if any laws were broken by Volkswagen's use of a defeat device.
If there are to be any successful lawsuits against VW over the emissions scandal in the EU, they will likely relate to consumer law - i.e. that VW's cars were deceptively sold as being clean when they were not, and people's vehicles lost value due to VW's actions when the emissions problems became known.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> selling millions of vehicles VW sold approximately 475000 affected diesel vehicles in the US (compared to approx. 84.5 million car sales in the same time period).
This has always been my problem with the whole case. Yes they violated the law and yes they probably should be some punishment but the real impact was almost nothing, the vehicles would have met the restrictions of only a few years prior, and the limits are almost entirely arbitrary and politically motivated.
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True, they did make a choice. The nuance I'm interested in is whether a person in this situation would reasonably assume they would lose their job, or promotion opportunities, etc, if they didn't do the illegal task as asked. And if so, does that create a civil liability?
Sounds a bit like "Superior orders" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders . > that the defense of superior orders was no longer considered enough to escape punishment; but merely enough to lessen punishment
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> selling millions of vehicles VW sold approximately 475000 affected diesel vehicles in the US (compared to approx. 84.5 million car sales in the same time period).
This has always been my problem with the whole case. Yes they violated the law and yes they probably should be some punishment but the real impact was almost nothing, the vehicles would have met the restrictions of only a few years prior, and the limits are almost entirely arbitrary and politically motivated.
Now, yes worldwide 100,000's of people die every year from air pollution but simply giving up is a poor solution. Further, you can't make getting caught have similar penalties vs. cheating or you promote cheating as having zero downsides.
Corporations aren't democracies, closer to tyrannies (Chomsky). You refuse work, look for new one... Waiting for his boss to get 400 months, and 10x until CEO level. They killed people ffs.
>They killed people ffs You say that as though they shot them or discussed the possible body count in a meeting. Sure, people died as a far downstream result of a bunch of cars polluting a lot more than they supposedly did. The effect is far enough downstream that it's not really relevant. The alternative to VW breaking the law was not a pollution free world. People die as a result of things that are technically prev…
Are you thinking of issues like bio-accumulation of pollutants?
Not questioning his innocence, but will the executives involved be held to the same legal standard? EDIT: FTA > U.S. prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives in connection with the diesel emissions cheating probe. Liang is one of the lowest-ranking executives charged so far. > Another VW executive, Oliver Schmidt, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in Detroit on Dec. 6.…
> but will the executives involved be held to the same legal standard Yes, they will, but Germany will not extradite them. They already made that clear. And it is very unlikely that the german court system will prosecute them. Haven't heard anything yet, because this might inflict the politicians who backed this Diesel emission testing system for decades. They didn't even go to the technical root yet. Only one made t…
[1]:http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/ex-vw-chef...
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It's strange to me that many countries sign "bilateral" extradition treaties with Germany or other countries with similar policies such as Brazil.
Well. Is there any case where any western country did extradite their own citizen for non-spionage, non-military, non-war and non-capital crime? I hope not. I certainly do not approve of the scam and deception VW did (and possibly other automobile manufacturers?), but I think I do not approve extraditing citizens of your own country for some non-capital crime. Or even some capital crimes for that matter. I (and most…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/british-trad...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three
The US doesn't always gets what it wants, for example with Gary McKinnon: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well. Is there any case where any western country did extradite their own citizen for non-spionage, non-military, non-war and non-capital crime? I hope not. I certainly do not approve of the scam and deception VW did (and possibly other automobile manufacturers?), but I think I do not approve extraditing citizens of your own country for some non-capital crime. Or even some capital crimes for that matter. I (and most…
There are several examples where the US has successfully extradited people from the UK on charges related to financial crimes: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/british-trad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three The US doesn't always gets what it wants, for example with Gary McKinnon: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138
I was watching a german program on the VW scandal and was surprised to learn that the German government allowed VW to issue a software patch to correct the problem instead of offering to repair or compensate owners for the cars they purchased. Even with the software patch the vehicles still released emissions that were well above the norm. Also, I don't believe any VW executives have ever been charged in Germany.
I was also very curious how they managed to get my '09 "fixed" somehow via a simple software patch. I would have understood it if it had lost 20% performance or got 20% higher fuel consumption - but that didn't happen. So: if it was that easy to fix legally why did they cheat in the first place?? Of course it can't be that easy. So of course my car is still polluting over the limit. And I think this is a story that i…
Your car did take a performance hit and fuel economy hit. Not a big one, but enough to make it less competitive during instrumented tests by journalists. Tests are showing about 5-6% fuel economy hit which is not trivial, and also engine performance hit in higher RPM band.
Luckily, most car buyers don't push their cars enough to notice.