Emission of Guilt
3rd October 2015
Theodore Dalrymple turns over a rock.
But what most interested me about the VW episode was the speed with which VW owners in Britain made inquiries of litigation lawyers as to whether they had grounds to sue. It used to be said that the definition of an instant is the time it takes for the first horn to sound after the traffic lights in Mexico City turn from red to green; but in Britain, and no doubt elsewhere, the definition might now be the time it takes for the first inquiry to be made of a litigation lawyer after some wrongdoing is publicly revealed—wrongdoing, that is, by people or corporations with deep pockets, for defendants are selected as much by capacity to pay as by anything they have done.
It goes without saying that corporations, being run by people, are capable of the deepest-dyed villainy, but that does not mean that the rest of the population is honest. What harm has VW so far done to the owners of its vehicles that they have grounds for legal action? I am sure that they, the owners, are already telling themselves lots of convenient lies, for example that they have been deeply traumatized by the revelation that their cars emit more pollution than they thought when they bought them.