A regional court in the southern German city of Munich has to reopen a massive damages case brought by buyers of lorries from across Europe after the European Union fined major manufacturers including Daimler and Volvo/Renault for having colluded on pricing.
The Munich Higher Regional Court overturned a judgement handed down three years ago on Thursday, ruling - contrary to the opinion of the lower court - that the lawsuit was admissible.
Buyers of trucks had brought the lawsuit after the European Commission found in 2016 that major lorry makers had broken EU antitrust rules.
They had "colluded for 14 years on truck pricing and on passing on the costs of compliance with stricter emission rules," the commission said in a press release at the time, fining makers Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, Scania and DAF a record sum of almost €4 billion ($4.3 billion).
MAN was not fined as it had revealed the cartel to the EU executive.
At the time, the European Commission did not say whether buyers suffered any damage as a result of the antitrust breaches. The lorry manufacturers deny this.
In the Munich lawsuit, buyers of some 70,000 allegedly overpriced lorries are demanding €560 million in damages plus interest from MAN, Daimler, Iveco and Volvo/Renault. They have assigned their claims to debt collection and legal services provider Financialright Claims, which is acting as the sole plaintiff and will receive a 33% commission if successful.
The collective action failed in a first instance in 2020 when the Munich regional court dismissed the case as partly inadmissible and partly unfounded.
The judges ruled that Financialright Claims was not entitled to claim because the assignments violated the Legal Services Act and were therefore void. However, the Higher Regional Court came to a different conclusion on appeal.
The lawsuit concerns very different lorries and customers from all over Europe, and claims under particularly complicated antitrust law, including foreign law.
Lorry buyers and lessees should not be burdened with the risk of the lower court's assessment in a difficult legal situation, the higher court said.
Contrary to the opinion of the truck manufacturers, the action should not be dismissed due to the lack of entitlement of the collection and legal services company, it added.
Daimler Truck said the company was considering whether to appeal the decision to reopen the case, pointing out that the ruling deals exclusively with formal preliminary questions of the lawsuit and makes no statement about possible damages. "We will continue to defend ourselves resolutely against unjustified claims."
