Judgment has been handed down today in the unprecedented Pan-NOx Emissions litigation, the largest group action in English legal history with over 1,600,000 Claimants, further to a legal issues trial against five Lead Defendants that ran from October 2025 to March 2026.
In a significant victory for the manufacturers of diesel vehicles under the Euro 5 and Euro 6b regulatory standards, Cockerill LJ (sitting as a judge of the High Court) has found that “defeat devices” under the Emissions Regulation are only those devices which detect a regulatory emissions test and objectively operate with the purpose of causing a vehicle’s emissions control system to work more effectively when it senses that it is being subjected to a test cycle compared to how it would operate on the road. As a result, the Claimants lost on the vast majority of allegations that manufacturers’ vehicles contained prohibited defeat devices.
In reaching her judgment, Cockerill LJ also declined to follow post-IPCD case law of the CJEU on the meaning of the Emissions Regulation. The judge held that the decisions of the CJEU appeared to contain errors and also that the English court, with the vast amount of factual and expert evidence before it, had better access to relevant material to decide the meaning of key provisions of the Emissions Regulation.
A copy of the judgment is available here.
Peugeot Citroën DS, one of the Five Lead Defendants, was represented by a Fountain Court team of John Taylor KC, James Cutress KC, Samuel Ritchie and Christopher Monaghan, instructed by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.
Vauxhall Motors Limited, one of the Non-Lead Defendants to the action, was represented by Leigh-Ann Mulcahy KC, leading Charlotte Tan of Brick Court Chambers and Alexander Thompson of 20 Essex Street, instructed by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.
Fiat Chrysler, another Non-Lead Defendant, was represented by Simon Atrill KC and Sam Hussaini, instructed by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.
