Leigh Day is investigating a potential group claim against Jaguar Land Rover over an alleged ‘cheat device’ fitted on some of their cars in order to artificially reduce emissions to pass EU tests.

Monitoring shows that when the vehicles are driven on the road, they emit many times more levels of toxic NOx gases than under test conditions.

This is extremely damaging, as increased levels of NOx contribute to air pollution which is reported to be the largest environmental risk to UK public health and is linked to as many as 64,000 early deaths a year.

We believe that this software is unlawful under UK law and we are planning on bringing legal claims for compensation on behalf of consumers who purchased those vehicles that were affected.

The claims are being investigated on behalf of people who leased or owned Jaguar and Land Rover diesel vehicles. The claims could be worth up to 75% of the purchase price of the vehicle for each owner.

If you bought or leased a diesel Jaguar or Land Rover vehicle, your vehicle may be affected and you can apply to join the claim. Please complete our online vehicle registration checker below, to confirm if your vehicle is potentially affected.

We are fighting for compensation on behalf of owners of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles who we believe were deliberately misled over the environmental performance of their vehicles.

This concerns Jaguar and Land Rover’s use of an alleged ‘defeat device’ in some of their diesel cars, to artificially reduce NOx emissions to levels which pass regulatory tests.

In 2016 both German and UK regulators found that a number of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles were producing NOx emissions that were higher than the permitted levels.  

We believe that the ‘defeat devices’ used in the vehicles are unlawful under UK law and consequently, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of unlawfully polluting vehicles still on the roads in the UK.

We believe that owners of the affected vehicles should be compensated because they were mis-sold these vehicles, which were advertised as being more environmentally friendly with lower NOx emissions.

Increased levels of nitrogen dioxide emissions are harmful to the environment and to the health of children and adults.

This case is in its early stages but we expect it to follow the trajectory of the other emissions cases, including VW and Mercedes.

We intend to secure funding from commercial providers to ensure we have the resources available to instruct the best experts and barristers and to have a large enough legal team to ensure that our clients get the best service possible.

If you bought or leased a diesel Jaguar or Land Rover vehicle, it is possible your vehicle may be affected. Please complete our online vehicle registration checker to confirm if your vehicle has potentially been affected.

Complete our form as fully as possible. We will need you to provide us with your vehicle registration number so that we can confirm if your vehicle is affected.

We will be bringing these claims on a ‘No Win-No Fee’ basis under a Damages-Based Agreement (DBA). This means that we will deduct up to 30% (exclusive of VAT and expenses) of the damages / compensation you receive (the “DBA Payment”) if the claim is successful. The DBA Payment represents our fee for the work we undertake/incur in acting for you and sharing the financial risk in pursuing your claim on your behalf. At the current rate of VAT of 20% the total amount we will deduct from your damages is no more than 36%.

If you are successful in your claim we will also deduct from your damages any expenses that we incur during the case such as court fees, travel costs and expert fees which will be in addition to the 30% (exclusive of VAT). However, we will also seek to  recover our time costs and expenses from the Defendant(s) so that it is highly likely that you will end up paying less than 30% (exclusive of VAT) overall.

If you do not win your case you do not have to pay us anything.  

We have provided a worked example below to illustrate how instructing us under a DBA works where we are acting under a DBA on the same terms we are offering you in this case.

Client enters into DBA for 30% of damages + VAT + expenses. Client wins their case and receives £10,000 in compensation. We also recover from the Defendant £2,000 towards our time costs and expenses

In the above example if the client receives £10,000 in damages / compensation once they have paid everything they owe to Leigh Day they will go home with £7,400. So although there is a DBA Payment of 30% (excluding VAT) because this amount is first taken from any costs recovered from the Defendant, the actual percentage taken from the client’s damages is 26% in total.

The DBA Payment will never be more than 30% of your damages (excluding VAT), irrespective of the number of claimants within the group.

Once you have checked that you are eligible to bring a claim, we will ask you to read through our funding agreement and sign the same. You will then be a client of the firm.

If you lose (that is, you get no money back from the Defendants), then you do not have to pay us anything.

We will arrange insurance to protect you against the risk of losing and having to pay Jaguar Land Rover’s legal costs.

Provided all the vehicles you want to claim for are affected, yes. We need you to complete a separate questionnaire for each of your vehicles.

No, it does not matter where you bought your Jaguar or Land Rover vehicle as long as it was bought in England or Wales. You are eligible to bring a claim against the manufacturer whether you bought your vehicle from a Jaguar or Land Rover showroom, from a private seller or from a third party dealer, or if you bought the car for business purposes.

Yes, you will still be able to claim whether your vehicle was bought new or second hand.

The claims are centred around the argument that, had the purchaser known about the emissions issue/defective parts, then this would have been a significant factor in their decision to buy the vehicle or to continue to make payments under a finance agreement.

If knowledge of the emissions issue makes little or no difference to your decision to buy the vehicle, then you may not be able to claim. Please do contact us directly on jaguar@leighday.co.uk or landrover@leighday.co.uk if you would like to discuss your specific circumstances.

At this early stage, it is impossible for us to give an accurate prediction of timescale. As with any legal claim, there are some things within our control and some things outside our control. Much will depend on the Defendants’ response to the legal claim.

In our experience group claims of this type may take two to five years to progress through the Court, but it could take longer. As a client you will be provided with regular updates, particularly in relation to the timescale for next steps which can be predicted more accurately than for the case as a whole.

If knowledge of the emissions issue makes little or no difference to your decision to buy the vehicle, then you may not be able to claim. Please do contact us directly on jaguar@leighday.co.uk or landrover@leighday.co.uk if you would like to discuss your specific circumstances.

The types of legal claims we would recommend you bring will depend on your individual circumstances (such as when you bought your vehicle, whether you bought it from an authorised dealer and whether it was paid for using finance). As such it is impossible to say that all claims will be worth a certain amount.

For those clients who are eligible to bring a claim under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (“CPUT”) (those being people who bought their vehicle on or after 1 October 2014, via an approved dealer or using approved finance and for non-business use) are entitled to recover a discount on payments made, ranging from 25% to 100%. The compensation recoverable under other types of claim is more dependent on proving loss and a lower amount may be recoverable than under CPUT.

This is the first time that these types of claims are being brought against Jaguar Land Rover in the English courts. Leigh Day is one of the country’s leading law firms and bringing group actions on behalf of consumers is one of our key areas of speciality.

Leigh Day are joint-lead lawyers in a similar emissions litigation on behalf of Volkswagen owners and recently won the first round of the case against Volkswagen in the English High Court.

We are also acting on behalf of vehicle owners against Mercedes, Nissan, Renault, Vauxhall, Porsche, Audi and other Volkswagen Group vehicles for similar allegations concerning ‘defeat devices’ that enable them to cheat emissions tests.

There are number of time limits applying to the claims we are bringing:

Deceit/misrepresentation and breach of statutory duty claims must be brought within 6  years of you discovering (or if you could have discovered with reasonable diligence) that your vehicle had emissions test cheating software.

Breach of contract claims must be brought within 6 years of the breach of contract, which in this case is 6 years from the date of purchase.

CPUT claims must be brought within 6 years from the date of making the agreement to buy the vehicle.

Consumer Credit Act claims should be brought within 6 years of the first payment made under your Jaguar or Land Rover finance agreement, although it may be possible to bring the claim after that date but only in respect of getting compensation for any payments made within 6 years or to be made in the future.

Yes. Affected vehicles which were leased or purchased from Motability are eligible to join the claims. 

There are a number of possible legal claims a vehicle owner could pursue in relation to their vehicle. It may be that, as a result of how you leased your vehicle, we only advise you to pursue some types of legal claim, and not others. If you have your Motability documents, please keep these somewhere safe until we request a copy.