My teenage daughter is a new driver, and we just started looking for a third car—which is why I'm freshly reminded of how much I, an indefatigable shopper, dislike shopping for cars.

It's too opaque, too high-pressure, too complicated, too time-consuming. So I read with great interest a decision on Friday, when a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit by VW salespeople against the automaker. I might even feel bad for them if they weren't so annoying. 

The sales reps filed a class action against VW in the wake of the diesel emissions scandal, claiming that the company's fraud caused them "significant damages, including lost commissions and other incentive pay, as well as lost employment and economic opportunity."

They have a point. 

As VW sales plummeted in 2015 and 2016, the frontline salespeople "not only found their commissions significantly diminished, but were also forced to spend significant time dealing with irate customers who had purchased defective vehicles from them," wrote plaintiffs counsel from Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky Wotkyns; Boucher LLP and Bradley Grombacher. "Those customers lost faith not only in the Volkswagen brand, but also in the salespersons who sold them the defective vehicles."

Under the terms of a 2016 settlement, the customers wound up coming out just fine—they could make VW buy back their polluting vehicles at pre-scandal prices and pocket an additional cash payment for their troubles, or opt for repairs plus cash. 

The dealers struck a deal as well, receiving an average of $1.85 million apiece in a $1.2 billion settlement.

But the salespeople? 

Zilch. 

In a win for VW's outside counsel from Sullivan & Cromwell, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer dismissed the putative class, although he did give the plaintiffs leave to amend.

Breyer acknowledged upfront that the salespeople were injured. "Consumers were shocked by the blatancy and scale of the fraud and became less interested in the brand," he wrote. "The decline in demand for Volkswagen cars in turn meant that plaintiffs made less money."

But that doesn't mean they can get redress under theories of breach of contract, negligent interference with prospective economic advantage, fraud or RICO.

The problem with breach of contract was that Volkswagen Group of America, or VWGoA, only promised the salespeople it would pay them a commission for each car sold, plus compensation based on their customer service scores. The company never guaranteed anyone would sell a certain number of cars. "Even if the diesel scandal caused plaintiffs to sell fewer cars, that result did not breach the express terms of the agreements that are identified," Breyer wrote.

What about breaching the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing?

No dice. 

"It was in VWGoA's best interests that plaintiffs would sell more Volkswagen cars; and from the allegations there is no reason to believe that VWGoA sought to (or did) interfere with plaintiffs ability to sell those cars," Breyer wrote. "That consumer demand for Volkswagen cars dropped after the diesel scandal does not mean that VWGoA breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in the commission agreements that it had with plaintiffs."

So what about negligent interference with prospective economic advantage? 

To make that claim stick, the plaintiffs had to explain how VW interfered with one or more existing relationships that the sales reps stood to benefit from. Only belatedly in their opposition brief did the plaintiffs specify such relationships: repeat Volkswagen customers and franchise dealers.

Sorry, too late. Because the relationships were not originally identified in the complaint, Breyer held the claim was inadequately pled.

The fraud allegations fared no better. 

The salespeople said VW represented that the company's diesel cars had no significant defects, complied with EPA regulations and would perform and operate properly when driven in normal usage. None of that was true, they said, given VW secretly installed devices to defeat smog tests.

But Breyer held the fraud claims did not satisfy Rule 9(b). Namely, the "plaintiffs have not identified 'the who, what, when, where, and how' of these partial representations," he wrote. "As a result, the partial representations do not give rise to a duty to disclose."

The RICO wire fraud claim also failed under Rule 9(b).

 "At no point in the complaint do plaintiffs identify any particular representations that the RICO defendants made to them or to other VW salespersons," the judge wrote.

Rule 9(b) is a cruel master.

But there's a bigger underlying problem, Breyer observed: "Defendants' conduct was several steps removed from plaintiffs' lost income."

Step one was when VW duped regulators into certifying—and consumers into buying—VW's diesel cars. Step two was when the game was up—the defeat device scheme was revealed and VW's reputation took a hit. Step three was when fewer people bought VW cars, and the VW salespeople made less money.

The effects "are illustrative of the ripples of harm that fraudulent conduct may cause," Breyer wrote. But the "general tendency" of the law with respect to damages under RICO is not to go beyond the first step.

That's because there could be other reasons why salespeople sold fewer cars. Maybe there was an economic downturn or a dealership-specific change. Or maybe an individual salesperson had health problems or a bad breakup or one hundred other reasons.

Besides, where do you draw the line? "[I]t would be difficult to find a limiting principle," Breyer wrote. "Any third party who claimed that their income turned on the sale of cars at a VW dealership, 'ranging from automobile workers to advertising employees to the food truck parked outside the dealership,' could bring RICO claims for lost income, and those claims would be hard to distinguish from plaintiffs."