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Volkswagen is facing €8.2bn ($9.1bn; £7bn) in damages claims from 1,400 German investors over its emissions scandal, a state court has said.

The regional court in Braunschweig near VW's Wolfsburg headquarters said it received 750 lawsuits on Monday alone.

A year ago, an investigation in the US found that VW had cheated emissions tests for diesel cars by using special software.

VW faces a flood of actions and has set aside €16.2bn to cover the lawsuits.

The court said it brought in extra staff to process the claims submitted by shareholders, who were concerned that 18 September, the day VW's manipulations were uncovered a year ago, may be the deadline to file.

It said most of the cases were bundled actions containing claims from multiple plaintiffs, in many cases private investors.

Shareholder claims

The scandal broke after an investigation found that many Volkswagen cars being sold in America had software in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested.

The so-called "defeat device" changed the performance of the engines accordingly to improve results.

The German car giant admitted cheating emissions tests in the US and this summer agreed to pay $10.2bn to settle some of its US claims.

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Earlier this month, Australia launched legal action against the carmaker and last week asset manager Blackrock and a group of institutional shareholders said they would sue VW for €2bn.

The German states of Hesse and Baden-Wuerttemberg have said they will also take legal action.

The claims relate to the drop in Volkswagen's share price after the scandal broke.

Between September and October 2015, Volkswagen AG preference shares lost about 45% of their value, and are still down by about 28%

Hesse finance minister Thomas Schaefer said the fall in VW's share price had cost the state about €3.9m.

Criminal probe

Earlier this month, a VW engineer pleaded guilty to involvement in the scandal.

James Liang, a German national, pleaded guilty to violation of the clean air act, a wire fraud count and a consumer fraud count and became the first to be charged as part of the US Justice Department's year-long criminal probe into the firm's rigging of federal air-pollution tests.

He could face five years in prison, although by co-operating with the US federal government he could reduce his jail time.

His trial will be held in January.</s>Volkswagen faces 8.2 billion euros ($9.14 billion U.S.) in damage claims from investors over its emissions scandal in the legal district where the carmaker is based, a German court said.

A total of about 1,400 lawsuits have been lodged at the regional court in Braunschweig near Volkswagen’s (VW) Wolfsburg headquarters, the court said on Wednesday.

The Braunschweig court said it received some 750 lawsuits on Monday alone, which marked the first business day after the one-year anniversary of VW’s diesel emissions test-rigging scandal.

It said it brought in extra staff to process the suits submitted by shareholders concerned that Sept. 18, the day VW’s manipulations were uncovered a year ago, may be the deadline to file.</s>FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — A German court says it has added staff and storage space to handle the flood of investor lawsuits against Volkswagen.

The regional court in Braunschweig said Wednesday it has received 1,400 lawsuits seeking 8.2 billion euros ($9.2 billion).

On Monday alone, 750 lawsuits arrived from a single law office as a possible one-year deadline to file approached.

Institutional and individual investors claim Volkswagen did not disclose in a timely way that it faced costly action from U.S. regulators over cars with software that enabled them to cheat on diesel emissions tests.

They say the information could have enabled them to decide whether to sell their shares, which fell sharply after the U.S Environmental Protection Agency announced the case on Sept. 18, 2015.

Volkswagen says it met all its disclosure duties.</s>HANOVER, Germany, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The head of Volkswagen's luxury car division Audi has been questioned by investigators looking into the company's emissions scandal, VW Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said on Tuesday.

Mueller told reporters at an event in Hanover that Audi boss Rupert Stadler had been questioned but declined to give details.

Earlier, Spiegel magazine reported that experts from U.S. law firm Jones Day, which was tasked by Audi last year to investigate the scandal, would question Stadler about when he found out about the use of cheat software.

Earlier this week, Bild am Sonntag reported that Audi's head of development Stefan Knirsch would be suspended as part of the investigation into the emissions scandal.

Audi has admitted its 3.0 litre V6 diesel engine was fitted with emissions-control software, deemed as illegal in the United States where the scandal has engulfed the German carmaker.

Knirsch, Audi's former head of engine development, replaced Ulrich Hackenberg, the top engineer at Audi and the VW group, last year.

Hackenberg quit after being suspended together with two other executives closely associated with the development of the VW engine at the centre of the scandal, codenamed EA 189. (Reporting by Jan C. Schwartz in Hanover; writing by Emma Thomasson; editing by David Clarke)</s>BERLIN, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Volkswagen faces 8.2 billion euros ($9.1 billion) in damages claims from investors over its emissions scandal in the legal district where the carmaker is based, a German court said on Wednesday.

About 1,400 lawsuits have been lodged at the regional court in Braunschweig near Volkswagen's (VW) Wolfsburg headquarters, the court said.

The Braunschweig court said it received some 750 lawsuits on Monday alone, which marked the first business day after the anniversary of VW's diesel emissions test-rigging scandal.

It said it brought in extra staff to process suits submitted by shareholders concerned Sept. 18 - the day VW's manipulations were disclosed a year ago - could be the deadline to file.

Plaintiffs say the German carmaker didn't inform shareholders quickly enough over its cheating software, which was installed in up to around 11 million vehicles wordwide.

VW, which faces lawsuits and investigations across the world, has consistently said it did not break capital markets regulations in the disclosure of its cheating.

The biggest claim at the Braunschweig court, totalling 3.3 billion euros, was filed by lawyer Andreas Tulip on behalf of institutional investors around half a year ago.

The court detailed additional complaints on Wednesday, saying they included a filing by institutional investors for 30 million euros in damages, two investor groups demanding 1.5 billion and 550 million euros respectively and an investment company that sued the carmaker for 45 million euros.

It would take about four weeks to fully process the additional claims, the court said.

Complaints have also been filed by German state pension funds.

VW has so far set aside about $18 billion to cover the cost of vehicle refits and a settlement with U.S. authorities, but analysts think the bill could rise much further as a result of lawsuits and regulatory penalties.</s>Here is a timeline of the emissions scandal that has dogged automaker Volkswagen for the past year.

Sept. 18: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Volkswagen installed software on more than 475,000 cars that enabled them to cheat on emissions tests. The software reduced nitrogen oxide emissions when the cars were placed on a test machine but allowed higher emissions and improved engine performance during normal driving. The EPA was alerted to the discrepancy in a report from the International Council on Clean Transportation.

Sept. 22: Volkswagen says about 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide were fitted with the deceptive software. It sets aside 6.5 billion euros ($7.3 billion) to deal with the costs of the scandal, including expected recalls.

Sept. 23: Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigns. He takes responsibility for "irregularities" found by U.S. inspectors, but insists he personally did nothing wrong.

Sept. 25: Volkswagen appoints Matthias Mueller, the head of the group's Porsche unit, as the new CEO.

Sept. 29: Volkswagen says it has commissioned an external investigation by U.S. law firm Jones Day.

Oct. 1: Volkswagen names Hans Dieter Poetsch, its chief financial officer, as the new board chairman. The move had been planned since before the crisis but raises concerns about the ability of longtime insiders to get to the bottom of the matter.

Oct. 8: Volkswagen's top U.S. executive, Michael Horn, testifies before Congress. He apologizes for the scandal and blames it on "a couple of software engineers."

Oct. 15: Germany orders recall of all Volkswagen cars with the test-cheating software. By European Union rules, Germany's move means that all 8 million such cars are obliged to be recalled across the 28-country bloc.

Oct. 28: Volkswagen reports a loss of $1.83 billion in the third quarter after booking a charge of $7.5 billion to cover the costs of recalls connected to the scandal.

Nov. 2: The EPA and the California Air Resources Board say Volkswagen also installed the cheating software on thousands of Audi, Porsche and VW cars with 3.0-liter, six-cylinder diesel engines. The previous revelations of cheating involved four-cylinder diesels in smaller cars. Volkswagen initially rejects the new allegation, then admits the 3.0-liter engines have had illegal "defeat devices" since 2009.

Dec. 31: The Volkswagen brand's U.S. sales fall 5 percent for the year.

Jan. 4: The U.S. Justice Department sues Volkswagen over emissions-cheating software found in nearly 600,000 vehicles sold in the U.S. with 2.0-liter and 3.0-liter diesel engines, potentially exposing the company to billions in fines for violations of the Clean Air Act.

March 29: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sues Volkswagen, charging the company made false claims in commercials promoting its "Clean Diesel" vehicles as environmentally friendly.

April 21: U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer says U.S. Volkswagen owners with 2.0-liter diesels will be able to sell them back to the company or have them fixed. Says further details will be released in June.

April 22: Volkswagen takes an $18.2 billion charge to cover the cost of the diesel scandal and delays the results of its internal probe until the fourth quarter. It reports a full-year loss of $1.53 billion.

June 1: U.S. sales of the Volkswagen brand are down 13 percent in the first five months of the year. Global sales of Volkswagen cars are down 2 percent.

June 28: Volkswagen agrees to settlements that could total as much as $15.3 billion to resolve environmental and consumer claims arising from the scandal.

July 28: Volkswagen says its second quarter net earnings more than halved to 1.2 billion euros. Its global sales, however, held up. They rose 5.1 percent in June as European and Chinese demand offset a 11.7 percent slump in the U.S.

Aug. 25: Volkswagen reaches tentative deal with 650 U.S. dealers to compensate them for losses. The value of the settlement was not disclosed.

Sept. 9: Volkswagen engineer James Robert Liang pleads guilty to one count of conspiracy defraud the government in the U.S. Justice Department's ongoing investigation. He says he will cooperate in the probe.

Sept. 21: German court says it has received a total of 1,400 investor lawsuits against Volkswagen seeking damages worth 8.2 billion euros ($9.2 billion).</s>FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — A German court says it has added staff and storage space to handle a flood of 1,400 investor lawsuits against Volkswagen seeking damages worth 8.2 billion euros ($9.2 billion).

The regional court in Braunschweig said Wednesday that on Monday alone, 750 lawsuits arrived from a single law office as a possible one-year deadline to file approached.

Institutional and individual investors claim Volkswagen did not disclose in a timely way that it faced costly action from U.S. regulators over cars with software that enabled them to cheat on diesel emissions tests.

They say the information could have enabled them to decide whether to sell their shares, which fell sharply after the U.S Environmental Protection Agency announced the case on Sept. 18, 2015.

Lawyers have said the courts may eventually find that investors had one year to file suit after the EPA announcement; the anniversary fell on a Sunday, leaving Monday as the possible deadline and leading some plaintiffs to file in order to be on the safe side.

Volkswagen says it met all its disclosure duties. The company says that ahead of the EPA announcement it still appeared as if the diesel violation could be resolved by working with authorities and paying a relatively modest fine in the area of $100 million or less.

Instead, the company has wound up setting aside more than 18 billion euros ($20 billion) thus far to cover fines and consumer claims.</s>Volkswagen AG faces Germany’s biggest investor lawsuit as attorneys filed complaints totaling 8.2 billion euros ($9.2 billion) related to the diesel emissions scandal that wiped out a third of the company’s market value.

About 1,400 lawsuits are currently pending at a court in Braunschweig, about 20 miles from Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters, a judicial spokeswoman said Wednesday. Investors say they lost money on VW shares because the company was slow in disclosing the emissions-cheating issue.

Investors have lined up to sue in Germany, where VW shares plunged in the first two trading days after the Sept. 18 disclosure of the emissions scandal by U.S. regulators. Monday was the first business day after the anniversary of the scandal and investors had feared they needed to sue within a year of the company’s admission that it had equipped about 11 million diesel vehicles with software to cheat on pollution tests.

The amount is less than the 10.7 billion euros that had been expected based on lawyers’ statements last week, but more suits could still trickle in because of uncertainty about when the deadline expires. The court may need about four weeks to register all the complaints, it said.

The U.S. government, which is investigating the company for possible criminal charges and hasn’t approved a fix for the tainted vehicles, is also among the investors suing and its case was valued at 30 million euros.

Volkswagen, in a statement, reiterated its view that it complied with capital-market rules and that the claims are unfounded.

Volkswagen shares rose less than 1 percent to 119.10 euros at the close of trading in Frankfurt. They’re still down 11 percent this year.

“The number isn’t surprising. We’ve already seen some of the cases,” said Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Evercore ISI, with a “buy” rating on the stock. “It will be difficult for the plaintiffs to prove that VW acted intentionally here.”

Volkswagen has set aside about 18 billion euros to cover the costs of the scandal, but the lawsuits won’t likely add to the tally in the near future. Porsche Automobil Holding SE has been fighting damage claims related to its aborted effort to fully takeover Volkswagen since 2011, and there’s no end in sight to those legal battles.

The Braunschweig cases will probably take years, but over the next several months:

 Volkswagen will get a chance to respond to the complaints

 The judges will decide whether to delay the litigation pending the result of a “model case” under a procedure that centralizes the evidence phase in large-scale shareholder litigation

 The model-case proceedings are currently pending at the Braunschweig Appeals Court. That tribunal will have to choose one of the plaintiff lawyers to become lead counsel, which could happen by the end of the year

The Braunschweig Appeals Court will then work on a list of issues to be resolved as the plaintiffs are seeking answers to hundreds of questions of law and fact

 New cases could be filed as lawyers argue that for most plaintiffs the deadline to bring the suits expires at the end of 2018.

 While the investor lawsuits pile up in Braunschweig, consumers affected by the scandal are focusing their efforts on Brussels. Currently, the company is only offering repairs to European customers whereas Americans got packages worth thousands of dollars.

European Union Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova met with VW’s Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz Wednesday, and said the company pledged to carry out an EU-wide action plan to address the most urgent issue of informing EU consumers and repairing the affected cars.

In July, Jourova said she would work with consumer groups and regulators to pressure the company to give payouts.

The imposition of fines and extra compensation aren’t part of the European Commission’s role, but rather the responsibility of national courts and enforcement authorities, an EU official said after the meeting in Brussels.

A law firm separately sued Porsche Holding and VW in a court in Stuttgart on behalf of 263 investors seeking a combined 547 million euros over the diesel-disclosure issue. Porsche Holding, which is controlled by the Porsche-Piech family, owns a majority of Volkswagen’s voting stock and is effectively its parent company.

In a interim ruling in some of the cases filed earlier in Porsche’s hometown, the court has said it will review whether to set aside secrecy rules that the two companies were invoking as part of their defense, Andreas Tilp, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an e-mailed statement.

Porsche Holding spokesman Albrecht Bamler said the court’s interim ruling didn’t contradict any of the company’s arguments. Porsche, which has said the claims are unfounded, will submit its arguments to the tribunal in the respective proceedings, he said.</s>Volkswagen investors are demanding more than $9 billion in damages for the losses they sustained as a result of the automaker's huge diesel emissions scandal.

Around 1,400 lawsuits have been filed against Volkswagen (VLKAF) in Germany. The investors want payments totaling 8.2 billion euros ($9.1 billion), according to a statement from a court in Volkswagen's home state of Lower Saxony.

About 40% of the company's market value was wiped out when the scandal broke a year ago. Volkswagen admitted fitting as many as 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide with software that could cheat nitrogen oxide emissions tests.

But it only came forward after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency alerted the world to the issue.

Investors say Volkswagen failed to provide accurate and timely information about its cheating on emissions tests. Prosecutors are investigating whether former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn and another top executive should have come cleaner sooner about the possible financial costs of the scandal.

In April, the company recorded a loss of 5.5 billion euros ($6.2 billion) for 2015, after taking a 16.2 billion euro charge.

The German court said it has been swamped with lawsuits, and has even had to increase its storage capacity. It said the number of claims against Volkswagen is equivalent to half its normal annual workload.

Two of the lawsuits, worth 2 billion euros, were filed by institutional investors, and the rest by private investors.

Norway's state pension fund, Volkswagen's biggest independent shareholder, said in May it would sue the car maker for the losses it suffered. Blackrock (BLK), another top investor, is also reported to be suing the company.

Volkswagen has already agreed to pay $15.3 billion in civil penalties to compensate owners of its U.S. diesel cars, including an agreement to fix or buy back the cars.</s>Mueller told reporters at an event in Hanover that Audi boss Rupert Stadler had been questioned but declined to give details.

Earlier, Spiegel magazine reported that experts from U.S. law firm Jones Day, which was tasked by Audi last year to investigate the scandal, would question Stadler about when he found out about the use of cheat software.

Earlier this week, Bild am Sonntag reported that Audi's head of development Stefan Knirsch would be suspended as part of the investigation into the emissions scandal.

Audi has admitted its 3.0 liter V6 diesel engine was fitted with emissions-control software, deemed as illegal in the United States where the scandal has engulfed the German carmaker.

Knirsch, Audi's former head of engine development, replaced Ulrich Hackenberg, the top engineer at Audi and the VW group, last year.

Hackenberg quit after being suspended together with two other executives closely associated with the development of the VW engine at the center of the scandal, code named EA 189.
Litigants file a new wave of lawsuits against Volkswagen regarding its emissions scandal.