The legal actions initiated against manufacturers of industrial vehicles condemned by the European Commission for price-fixing agreements are slowly drawing to a close. At the end of January 2024, the dispute between DB Competition Claims and Daf Trucks concluded out-of-court. The parties agreed on a compensation amount, which remains confidential. However, a clue to the settlement value may be inferred from the financial results of the American company Paccar, which owns Daf Trucks, showing $446.4 million (equivalent to €413.8 million) for "non-recurring charges net of taxes related to litigation in Europe." This aligns with the compensation claim of €500 million, plus interest, put forward by DB Competition Claims.
DB Competition Claims is an entity that has consolidated compensation claims for the truck cartel from Deutsche Bahn, the German military (Bundeswehr), airport companies, and about forty other firms. It filed the lawsuit in 2017 at the Munich Court of First Instance. This settlement marks the first out-of-court agreement reached by a company involved in the cartel. The others are Daimler, Iveco, Man, Volvo/Renault, and Scania (the latter lost its appeal against the fine at the EU Court of Justice).
"After intense negotiations with Daf, a good solution for both parties was found," states DB's Martin Seiler, Board Member for Human Resources and Legal Affairs, in a press release. "Daf has fulfilled its responsibility to compensate for the damages related to the truck cartel. This is gratifying for us and all the affected companies that have entrusted us with their claims." Seiler hopes that other cartel participants will also prefer an out-of-court settlement to years of expensive legal proceedings.
The case emerged in 2016 when the European Commission uncovered a price-fixing cartel among almost all industrial vehicle manufacturers from 1997 to 2011. The Commission imposed a fine of €3.8 billion on the cartel members, still the highest in the history of EU Antitrust enforcement. The Commission's condemnation serves as evidence of the cartel and has paved the way for various compensation legal actions that are still ongoing.
