Many competition laws provide for claims regarding damages by those who have suffered injury from an infringement to the competition law. For example, those who have had to pay higher prices as a result of cartel violations, have the possibility to claim for damages, as restitution of the amounts for which they have been spoliated.
Source: UNCTAD
The Regional Court of Dortmund has asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling on the access of cartel victims to the so-called ‘assignment model’ (see here). Private enforcement of EU competition law is essentially driven by damage actions that bundle claims assigned by a multitude of victims to…
Introduction Three weeks ago, the Spanish Supreme Court delivered its first rulings on damages claims in the trucks cartel. Given that Spanish courts have been the most active in the EU on this case (see the stream of judgments issued by the Courts of Appeal in Figure 1, 85% are available at CENDOJ), there was…
In a recent judgment of 31 May 2023, the Amsterdam District Court (the District Court) accepted jurisdiction to adjudicate a damages case against Google Netherlands B.V. (located in Amsterdam) as well as against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., two US-based entities that were fined by the European Commission in the Google Shopping case for abuse…
In a preliminary reference procedure stemming from a private cartel damages action in Spain, the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’ or ‘the Court’) had to rule on the binding effects of national competition authorities’ (‘NCAs’) decisions for private enforcement as evidence before national courts. Besides, another question concerned the effects of the automatic nullity of…
On February 7, the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) delivered its first judgment on the merits of the claims for damages concerning the cartel of truck manufacturers ([2023] CAT 6). The judgment resolves the first two processes against DAF Trucks NV that had been initiated by Royal Mail and British Telecom (1284/5/7/18 (T) and 1290/5/7/18 (T))…
On 5 January 2023, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) published an important judgment in relation to follow-on damage actions relating to the so-called German drugstore products cartel (Case KZR 42/20). In its ruling, Germany’s highest civil court also confirmed a factual presumption of harm in the case of anticompetitive information exchanges. This…
The judgment of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in Tráficos Manuel Ferrer (C-312/21) provides some clarity on the compatibility of national cost rules and judicial damages estimation with EU primary law – the effective enforcement of EU competition law – and the rules of the Damages Directive. The CJEU followed AG Kokott’s opinion to…
The preliminary ruling of 12 January 2023 in RegioJet can easily be perceived as a continuation of the jurisprudence on disclosure rules that was developed by the European Court of Justice (the Court or ECJ) in the case of C-163/21 – PACCAR. The PACCAR case concerned specific questions of disclosure of documents, which were not…
Over the last five years, mass litigation in the field of antitrust in Spain has rapidly increased. The so-called “Trucks Cartel Litigation” has generated thousands of judgements and dozens of referrals to the CJEU. These judgements and referrals have allowed national courts and the CJEU to clarify several legal questions, such as the temporal application…
On 10 November 2022, the European Court of Justice (ECJ or the Court) delivered its judgment in another private enforcement case, interpreting Art. 5 of Directive 2014/104/EU (the Damages Directive or the Directive). It answered the preliminary question raised by a Spanish First Instance Commercial Court that the disclosure of information or documents which do…
