Deka Investment is named lead plaintiff in Volkswagen diesel case by German court

German court named Frankfurt-based Deka Investment as top plaintiff for 1,470 damages claims against Volkswagen amounting to 1.9 billion euros ($2 billion).

The plaintiffs stated they lost cash on a drop of nearly a quarter in automaker’s share price when it confessed cheating U.S. diesel-emissions tests in September 2015. They inform Volkswagen should have cautioned the market of the risk before.

These claims represent only a fifth in value of the financiers cases pending at the Braunschweig higher regional court and a little fraction of the legal difficulties that Volkswagen is dealing globally from investors, consumers and regulators.

The claims are being collected in Germany’s closest counterpart to a class-action case, where one case is selected as representative and the outcome applied to rest of others.

Overall, about 1,540 investor cases remains pending at the court with a overall claims volume of 8.8 billion euros. A court spokesman stated most of the other claims come from institutional investors in abroad.

Other present plaintiffs can look forward to join the test case proceedings for the next six months however new plaintiffs cannot come forward to take part. The court stated it would schedule a date for a first hearing under next three months.