The Federal Court heard in Sydney on Thursday that the companies based in Australia had not accepted service of the lawsuit on behalf of their offshore parent. Justice Foster made an order granting Maurice Blackburn leave to file and serve the documents outside Australia. Credit:Getty Images Justice Lindsay Foster warned "serious costs orders" could be made against the companies if they put the parties to the time and expense of formally serving the claim outside the jurisdiction. "They've got to come forward and participate in the proceedings in a sensible way," Justice Foster said. Cameron Moore SC, for Maurice Blackburn, said the firm found it "surprising" it might need to go through the "rigmarole" of formally serving the documents.

Justice Foster made an order granting Maurice Blackburn leave to file and serve the documents outside Australia, in the event the law firm acting for the companies in Australia did not accept service of the claim by December 3. Dr Peter Cashman of Bannister Law. Credit:Jessica Shapiro He also ordered Volkswagen to file a "concise narrative statement" by December 16 setting out the admissions it was making in the case, as well as any points on which it denied liability. Counsel for Volkswagen, Ruth Higgins, told the court her clients might have difficulty providing the information in the time provided and she had concerns the document "will not be of optimal utility to the court". The Maurice Blackburn action is one of two class actions that have been filed against the car-maker and Dr Higgins pointed out there was an issue about which claim would be allowed to proceed.

Boutique law firm Bannister Law had already filed a claim against Volkswagen Australia and Audi Australia, and is not proceeding against the offshore parent companies. They've got to come forward and participate in the proceedings in a sensible way. Justice Lindsay Foster Peter Cashman, for Bannister Law, told the court the companies had "no conceivable basis" for defending the claim in light of the admissions already made. Dr Cashman said the case would be factually straightforward and the remedy sought under the Australian Consumer Law was limited to compensation. In a statement released on Thursday, Volkswagen said it could fix its rigged engines in as little as 30 minutes but could not guarantee its solution would not affect the fuel consumption or the overall performance of the cars that were designed to cheat pollution tests.

It comes three months after the car maker admitted that it that used software to spew out as much as 40 times the legal limit for emissions, equating to more than 10,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxide pollutants each year. The "consumer-friendly measure" would, in some cases, involve fitting a piece of mesh over the car's air mass sensor. The mesh, or "flow transformer", is designed to help measure the accuracy of air intake for optimum combustion and would be fitted to only to the rigged 1.6 litre diesel engines. Volkswagen said it should take less than an hour to install. The bigger two litre engines will only need a software upgrade, Volkswagen said, adding it should take about 30 minutes. It expects to find a solution for its rigged 1.2 litre engines before the end of November and said it would most likely involve a software update.