The following is a summary of a selected opinion issued by the Supreme Court of Texas in May 2023. The summary is intended as an overview of selected aspects of the opinion only; please review the entire opinion.
PERSONAL JURISDICTION: “Dieselgate” auto manufacturers subject to specific personal jurisdiction in Texas, despite contacts with Texas being undifferentiated from those with other states involved in nationwide scheme.
State v. Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, No. 21-0130 (Tex. May 5, 2023).
This consolidated interlocutory appeal arises out of the “Dieselgate” scandal, which involved the intentional installation and use of illegal “defeat devices” by certain German auto manufacturers into imported vehicles in order to avoid compliance with U.S. emissions standards. The vehicles were marketed as environmentally friendly “clean diesels,” but in fact the defeat devices would cause the vehicles to perform differently during emissions testing than during normal operation, when the vehicles’ emissions would be “substantially higher”—up to 40 times…