11:25 am, July 27, 2026
High Court judge Adam Constable has decided that Mercedes-Benz will be the only car maker to proceed to the Dieselgate damages trial in November after the claimants attempted to delay until after their appeal.
Of the five carmakers who faced scrutiny, also including Peugeot-Citroen, Ford, Renault and Nissan, Mercedes requested that the trial go ahead on November 9 as planned.
The manufacturers largely defeated the claimants in the trial, and the Pan-NOx Emissions litigation group are now seeking permission to appeal this decision.
Justice Sara Cockerill made her decision at the High Court on July 10 for the case where 1.6mil owners took on five car manufacturers. The trial looked at 20 cars from these five makers, an decided that the majority were not fitted with a ‘prohibited defeat device’ or PDD.
She commented in the judgement that she expects an appeal will be granted due to the size of the claimants group.
Mercedes was found to have some prohibited defeat devices, although the claimants failed to prove that several of those devices reduced the effectiveness of the emissions control system in the representative vehicles. It said it wants to keep to the original timetable despite the likely appeal.
In the High Court judgement Justice Cockerill said a prohibited defeat device was not simply any system that behaved differently on the road than during laboratory testing. Instead, she rejected both the claimants’ argument that almost every change in emissions strategy was unlawful and manufacturers’ claims that only software designed to detect an emissions test could qualify.
‘There is no allegation that any of them contained a device which is the same as the VW PDD at the centre of Dieselgate. Any thought that the answer to this case is obvious must therefore be put firmly to one side,’ she said in the July 10 ruling.
She felt that the claimants’ definition of a defeat device was too wide and manufacturers’ too narrow, saying: ‘The practical effect of their case [the claimants] would either be, or come close to being, that every single Euro 5 and Euro 6 vehicle produced by every single manufacturer contained a PDD.’
She added: ‘Some manufacturers’ approach would come close to giving themselves carte blanche – so long as the test is passed.’
Ford, Renault and Nissan were all found to not have any PDD while Peugeot-Citroen was found to have some prohibited defeat devices in relation to certain emissions strategies.
While the case looked at just these five manufacturers and 20 cars, which were anonymised, the legal findings are intended to guide the remaining Pan-NOx claims against other manufacturers.