U.S. Judge Blocks Bid by German Law Firm to Get VW Diesel Documents

A federal judge in California has ruled that a German law firm cannot access some 25 million pages of Volkswagen AG records acquired by the U.S. Dept. of Justice during its investigation into VW’s diesel cheating, Reuters reports.

VW submitted the documents in the U.S. under a protective order that bars the Justice Dept. from sharing the files. German law firm GSK Stockmann is seeking the records to bolster its lawsuit on behalf of 1,600 German owners of VW cars equipped with diesels rigged to evade emission rules. The group seeks almost €8.6 billion ($10.3 billion) in compensation.

VW has already agreed to spend as much as $25 billion in the U.S. to pay fines and make restitution for the same type of cheating in the American market.

Stockmann contended it should have access to the documents because it had been hired last year to represent the Justice Dept. in Germany. The department was suing VW on behalf of retired federal employees whose accounts included shares in VW. The shares lost value when VW admitted the cheating.

VW argued that the documents could be leaked to the media in Germany if turned over to Stockmann. Reuters says U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Corley ruled that Stockmann could not make an “end-run around German discovery rules” by simply borrowing the Justice Dept.’s VW documents.