Litigation firm Bentham is proposing to fund legal action on behalf of truck purchasers affected by price fixing over the last 14 years.
The European Commission issued a record €2.9bn fine to five major truck manufacturers after it was found that they co-ordinated truck pricing and colluded on passing on the costs of compliance with emissions rules from 1997 until 2011.
These truck manufacturers were found by the Commission to have colluded by manipulating truck prices and by passing-on to their customers the costs of compliance with stricter Euro 6 emission rules. MAN avoided a fine by informing the commission of the cartel.
All the truck manufacturers have acknowledged their involvement in the cartel, except for Scania whose involvement remains under investigation.
Jeremy Marshall, chief investment officer at Bentham, referred to the enormity of the damage caused by the cartel, said: “The volume of truck sales covered by the European Commission is staggering – we estimate that around 10 million trucks were sold in the EU during the cartel period and that, within that number, and based on estimates of overcharges attributed to previous cartels, buyers of medium and heavy trucks were overcharged by an estimated €10,500 per truck.
Bentham is determined to bring the opportunity to recover the overcharges to the attention of as many truck purchasers as it can and enable these victims of the cartel collectively to seek redress. Claims against the truck cartel are expected to be one of the largest ever compensation claims resulting from a cartel ruling.”
The collective claim is pan-European, and will be lodged separately to that proposed by the RHA earlier this month.
Potential claimants who purchased or leased trucks from any one or more of the following companies - MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, DAF or Scania, during the period 1997 to 2011 - should register their details on the Bentham Europe website.
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