VW Pays Millions To Lawyers To End Seat Lawsuit, Owners Get Leftovers

October 14, 2025

VW agreed to settle a lawsuit over Atlas second-row seat latch concerns.
It covers 2018–2024MYs with allegedly faulty seat latching mechanisms.
Warranty extends to 10 years or 100K miles if failure is dealer-confirmed.

Volkswagen has reached a settlement in a long-running U.S. class action lawsuit that began four years ago, closing a chapter that centered on allegedly defective second-row seat latches in its Atlas SUVs. The case stirred some debate over whether the issue lies in the design itself or in how owners use it.

Read: Hundreds Of VW Atlas Models Need Brake Repairs In The US

Initially, the plaintiffs pushed for Volkswagen to repair or replace the affected latches, or even offer buybacks for their vehicles. In the end, they accepted a financial settlement and a warranty extension instead of those broader remedies.

Latch Trouble Allegations

The lawsuit claimed that the 2018-2024 Atlas models have second-row seats that would fail to latch after the seat had been folded or slid forward.

Volkswagen quickly denied any issue with its latching mechanism, suggesting instead that many owners may have been unaware of how to confirm that the seat was fully locked in place.

Oftentimes, the only way to see if a second row is latched is to push it firmly into place, to hear it latch, and then to wiggle it back and forth to confirm. In the Atlas, VW added a pop-up red indicator that is visible when the seat is not latched, but slides away when the seat is latched.

Despite this feature, the lawsuit argued that the indicator was “an inadequate means to inform the driver that the seat is not properly secured to the floor.”

Legal Costs and Compensation

As part of the settlement, Volkswagen will pay the plaintiffs’ legal team $4 million, even as the company continues to maintain that there is no underlying defect, according to Carcomplaints.

In addition, each of the 15 named plaintiffs will receive $2,500 for a total of $37,500, while all owners will benefit from an extended warranty on the seat latch, now covering 10 years or 100,000 miles from the vehicle’s original in-service date. The automaker will also reimburse any owner who previously paid to repair or replace a latch.

Importantly, the warranty extension applies only when a Volkswagen dealership confirms that a latch has actually failed. The company notes that the coverage excludes any malfunction caused by “damage, abuse, alteration, modification, collision or crash, vandalism, and/or other impact or damage from outside sources.”

As such, owners can’t intentionally damage it in hopes of it being replaced and receiving an extended warranty.

Volkswagen has also released a short video on YouTube explaining how the pop-up indicator works and demonstrating the correct procedure for accessing the Atlas’s third row.