Speaker 1: Let's turn now to our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring
Speaker 1: legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg Law host Tune
Speaker 1: Grosso and Greg Store discussed Volkswagen's admission of guilt in
Speaker 1: the diesel cheating scandal. After U S. Attorney General Loretta
Speaker 1: Lynch announced charges against five Volkswagen executives. They speak to
Speaker 1: Eric Gordon, a professor at Michigan Law School, and Anthony Sabino,
Speaker 1: founding partner of Sabino and Sabino. Anthony in this plea agreement, Volkswagen, Uh,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, admitted that its employees agreed to
Speaker 1: deceive both regulators and customers. Can we look at this
Speaker 1: as Volkswagen has sort of, uh, you know, given up
Speaker 1: its employees in this case in order to to kind
Speaker 1: of deal to some extent. Yes, Again, I think Volkswagen
Speaker 1: realizes that this was the course of achieving a settlement
Speaker 1: with the United States governments. I have no doubt that
Speaker 1: Attorney General Lynch, and she's always been known as a
Speaker 1: hard charging, very thorough litigator, both in private practice as
Speaker 1: well as in her various roles at the Justice Department
Speaker 1: as U S Attorney por prior to being the g
Speaker 1: that they demanded this as part of the bargain, and
Speaker 1: UH again allegations which now would appair to be admitted
Speaker 1: to UH, thereby becoming facts of a sort. UH. Seems
Speaker 1: to be very little doubt that these folks did what
Speaker 1: they were accused of, and Volkswagen viewed it as a
Speaker 1: necessity put upon them. So from that point, Eric, this
Speaker 1: settlement is the largest criminal fine imposed on an automaker.
Speaker 1: It's almost five times what GM paid and four times
Speaker 1: what Toyota paid to settle their cases. Why so large? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is really severe. Um you had you know,
Speaker 1: in GM, Um you probably had some stupidity and some
Speaker 1: cover up. UM in v W what you had as
Speaker 1: a company that made a conscious decision, we will violate
Speaker 1: the law. We will pollute the air in order to
Speaker 1: sell cars. Uh. Nobody at GM said, well, in order
Speaker 1: to sell cars, we're gonna put in this Crumby ignition switch.
Speaker 1: They put in an ignition switch that turned out to
Speaker 1: be Crumby, and they knew about it and didn't change it.
Speaker 1: But they didn't upfront say wow, we're gonna make some money.
Speaker 1: We gotta make money. We gotta sell cars. UM. And
Speaker 1: the only way we can do it is by putting
Speaker 1: in a crumby ignition switch. So the wrongdoing here is
Speaker 1: to use the technical legal term just so yucky. It's
Speaker 1: just so despicable that, uh, you know, I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: the multiple wasn't even higher. That's Eric Gordon, the professor
Speaker 1: at Michigan Law School, and Anthony Sabino, founding partner of
Speaker 1: Sabino and Sabino, speaking to Bloomberg Law host June Grosso
Speaker 1: and Greg Store. You can listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays
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