Britain’s Dieselgate Ruling Makes Deception Too Hard to Prove -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Britain’s biggest group litigation has revealed a travesty: diesel cars can spew outsized volumes of nitrogen oxides into real world air than at regulatory testing but their makers cannot be sued unless customers demonstrate the technology was deliberately programmed to identify and game the test itself.

That is the potentially destructive legacy of Pan-NOx Emissions Group Litigation, the case described everywhere as “Dieselgate 2.”

The largest manufacturers have been hit with claims from some 1.6 million owners of Euro 5 and Euro 6 diesel vehicles. The primary defendants are Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Nissan, Renault and Stellantis brands Peugeot and Citroën. The lawsuit could lay the automotive industry open to around £6 billion in claims, while its legal findings so far could impact on a further 800,000 cases against car manufacturers including BMW, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover and Hyundai-Kia. This is not a US-style class action, but rather coordinated group litigation in the strict sense. UK Judiciary

Claimants said diesel cars had illegal defeat devices including software or calibration strategies that suppressed emissions during certification testing in labs but softened pollution controls under normal driving conditions. The claimed real world nitrogen oxide emissions were reportedly in the range of multiples of legal limits.

London’s High Court ruled on liability in a high-profile trial on July 10, 2026 that examined 20 representative vehicles. Lady Justice Cockerill dismissed much of the claims against Ford, Nissan and Renault, while discovering illegal tech in some Mercedes and Peugeot-Citroën models. Reuters

Due to that awareness of the regulatory test cycle, the court interpreted a banned defeat device as mandating an intentional reason to change emissions control. So sore real world performance, test-sensitive engineering or certainly even huge emissions gaps aren’t have to sufficient. Establishing the degree of recognition comes through consumers having to penetrate proprietary software and corporate engineering decisions.

Such a standard endangers turning confidentiality into an excuse. It is the manufacturer that has proprietary control over source code, calibration records and internal correspondence and technical know-how yet proves intent and thus liability is on the consumer. Thus, when law requires proof embedded in the defendant’s digital architecture, access privileges justice.

This judgment creates also an alarming distance from the more protectionist approach that has been adopted by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Brexit will not dilute pollution. NOx damages lungs whether the software manipulation meets an artificially narrowly defined judicial interpretation or no.

A quantum trial in October 2026 will assess potential pay, including contractual and statutory claims relating to Mercedes cars. An attempt to delay the trial by around 450,000 Mercedes claimants was dismissed as the reduced trial was still ‘of practical use,’ according to the High Court.

Compensation, however, is more than just resale depreciation. So rather than pay the costs associated with their diesel misdeeds, heavy polluters like big oil simply externalize those costs to children suffering from asthma, to public healthcare systems scrambling for resources and polluted communities and cities trying (not always successfully) to enforce clean-air zones. The loss among consumers is only one aspect of the ecological and public-health damage.

Five Reforms Britain Now Needs Legislature must characterize the objective impact of defeat devices, as opposed to just provable subjective plan. Courts should lead impressing source code, calibration maps and internal testing records. As such, once severe laboratory road differences are shown to exist, the onus of proof should pass to manufacturers. Independent real-driving emissions audits should be required by regulators, and model-level results must be published. At a minimum, compensation frameworks need to fund all consumer remediation, health monitoring and recovery of essential services.

A vehicle should not become legal simply because its scam was technically advanced. Pollution is not punished by environmental law only clumsy cheating, and thus, it does not regulate modern industry at all, it rewards better hidden pollution.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia