New Jersey attorney general Gurbir S. Grewal, Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) commissioner Catherine R. McCabe and division of consumer affairs (DCA) director Paul R. Rodriguez announced multiple legal actions to protect the public from the sale of tampered vehicles that release excessive amounts of air pollution.
To protect the environment and public health, automobile manufacturers are required to reduce pollution from vehicles by installing emissions control technology that meets air quality standards. Despite these clean air requirements, some unscrupulous auto dealers, auctioneers, repair shops and individuals modify vehicles by altering or removing the emission control systems or installing software that can disrupt their operation. This tampering violates the law, depletes air quality and threatens public health.
In the first action, Grewal and McCabe announced a lawsuit against Manheim Remarketing Inc., the nation’s largest vehicle auction company, alleging that it violated New Jersey’s pollution control laws by facilitating the sale of hundreds of tampered vehicles.
According to the complaint, DEP identified over 200 vehicles offered or sold through Manheim that were clearly disclosed as tampered, and a surprise DEP inspection at a Manheim facility last year found that 28 percent of these inspected vehicles were unlawfully tampered. The complaint seeks to prevent Manheim from allowing sales of tampered vehicles, which would significantly disrupt the resale market for the vehicles.
At the same time, Grewal and Rodriguez announced that DCA issued Notices of Violation to eight auto dealers who sold tampered cars directly to consumers.
Grewal stated, “Environmental protection is directly tied to the public’s health, including for environmental justice communities. Tampered vehicles in particular, release harmful air emissions that affect our residents’ well being, but national companies like Manheim refuse to protect our residents from this problem. Today, companies and dealerships across the state are on notice: we will hold accountable anyone in New Jersey who seeks to profit through the sale of these unlawful, polluting vehicles.”
“When someone intentionally tampers with emissions controls, they are not just cheating the market – they are cheating our environment and the health of our communities,” said Commissioner McCabe.
Manheim operates nearly 80 vehicle auction facilities across the U.S., including 2 in New Jersey. The larger of Manheim’s New Jersey operations, Manheim New Jersey, is located on 300 plus acres in Mansfield Township. The company’s other New Jersey operation, Manheim Metro Skyline, is located in Fairfield Township, Essex County. Together, the two auction sites offer hundreds of thousands of vehicles for sale annually, many of them allegedly in violation of the State’s pollution control laws.
Filed in New Jersey Superior Court in Mercer County, the State’s lawsuit alleges that Manheim either sold or offered for sale at least hundreds of tampered vehicles between December 2016 and March 2019 – some of which were “clearly and explicitly” listing vehicles with missing pollution control devices or containing deliberately compromised pollution controls.
The allegations against the defendants are based on a two year DEP investigation focused on the sale of unlawfully tampered vehicles, particularly diesel trucks.
The complaint notes that disabling the exhaust recirculation controls and removing the catalytic converters on a diesel pick-up truck can increase the truck’s emission of ozone-pollution-contributing NOx (nitrogen oxide) by approximately 20 times the federal limit. And removing the diesel particulate filters from diesel trucks can increase PM2.5 emissions by 10 times the federal limit. Likewise, the complaint notes, disabling air pollution controls on gasoline-powered vehicles can cause increased tailpipe emissions of NOx, as well as certain volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide.
Between December 2, 2016 and March 15, 2019, Manheim’s two New Jersey auction sites offered a total of more than 850,000 vehicles for sale. The lawsuit alleges that, based on an analysis of Manheim’s records for the period on which DEP focused, Manheim either sold or offered for sale at least 214 vehicles that were “clearly and explicitly” disclosed in sales listings as emissions tampered. The sales listing disclosures that flagged the 214 vehicles that included such statements as “NO CATS,” “ALTERED EMISSIONS” or “EGR DELETE.”
The complaint alleges that the actual number of tampered vehicles offered for sale at Manheim’s two auction facilities “was most likely much higher” than 214 during the period focused on by investigators because “only a fraction” of tampered vehicles are actually identified as non-compliant.
The lawsuit seeks an order requiring Manheim to take critical steps to avoid the sale of these vehicles to New Jersey buyers in the future. Those precautions include screening vehicle listings for common tampering indicators, and performing basic visual inspections of vehicles at its in-state facilities. At the same time, the complaint also seeks imposition of civil penalties against Manheim and the three other defendant auto dealerships.
Published in the August 2020 Edition