Munich regional court takes a new approach in the nationwide truck antitrust proceedings. More than 80 lawsuits filed by freight forwarders seeking compensation for 180.000 trucks sold possibly overpriced claim.
That’s why the chamber, already at its first trial on wednesday, did not only deal with basic claims, but immediately with concrete claims for money.
Truck manufacturers daimler, volvo/renault, DAF, scania, MAN and iveco exchanged information on technology and prices between 1997 and 2011, according to the eu commission. The brussels competition authorities considered this to be a prohibited cartel and fined money-grubbers over 3.7 billion euros.
Freight forwarders from stuttgart to hanover sued for it. The largest lawsuit was filed by the bundesverband guterkraftverkehr logistik und entsorgung (BGL) in munich, representing 3,200 freight forwarding and transport companies with 85.000 trucks – that’s why many lawyers from other proceedings followed the munich chamber’s approach in their first local case.
In the first stage, other regional courts had only heard cases on whether hauliers could claim damages from truck manufacturers for price-fixing in principle. But what damages were actually incurred, they want to clarify only later in further lawsuits.
The munich court, on the other hand, immediately went to the heart of the dispute. In the first of the more than 80 pending cases, three plaintiffs quantified their damages for the purchase of 544 trucks at the request of the court: 4.5 million euros. The defendant truck manufacturers MAN and iveco rejected these claims.
The presiding judge gesa lutz paid attention to a whole list of unanswered questions. The plaintiffs had to prove in concrete terms that a truck with a capacity of 110 million euros was defective.000 euros bought truck only 100.000 euros had cost, if the manufacturers had not exchanged price lists. No claim "out of the blue" would suffice.
For many trucks, the bodies were almost as expensive as the trucks themselves, but only total prices were available. Trucks were also sold by independent traders, discounts were negotiated, others were leased – how is the damage calculated?? If hauliers paid more for new trucks, they could also sell them used at a higher price, which reduced their loss. Individual demands could be outdated.
Until the 27th. In february, the plaintiffs – a freight forwarder and its subsidiary in berlin, as well as munich lawyer peter gauweiler – and the sued truck builders are to comment on the issues. Expert opinions, for example from a market researcher on price developments, are also conceivable, but time-consuming and expensive.