Judgment 38/25 handed down by the Commercial Court of Seville partially upheld a claim for damages arising from the European truck manufacturers' cartel, ordering SCANIA AB to compensate the purchaser for 5% of the price of the vehicle purchased, plus legal interest.
This procedure, led by our partner Jorge Ballester Antón, reinforces the applicability of the doctrine of improper solidarity and provides legal clarity on the statute of limitations and the validity of the expert report as a means of quantifying the damage. At Summons, we have a team of experts in [claims for cartels and collusive practices] who lead this type of proceedings throughout Spain.
The defendant, SCANIA AB, pleaded lack of standing to sue as it did not manufacture the vehicles in question (which were IVECO and VOLVO). However, the Court rejected this plea, recalling that SCANIA was sanctioned by the European Commission for its participation in a single and continuous infringement of Article 101 TFEU. This entitles the injured party to bring a follow-on action against any member of the cartel, irrespective of the individual manufacturer.
The Court also applied the doctrine of improper solidarity, already consolidated by the case law of our Provincial Courts. This figure allows the injured party to claim against any participant of the cartel, even if the infringement was sanctioned in separate administrative decisions (such as those of 2016 and 2017). You can learn more about this principle in our article on [improper solidarity in cartel damages claims].
Statute of limitations: a hurdle overcome
SCANIA also raised the plea of limitation, arguing that the time-limit should run from the press release published by the European Commission in 2016. However, the Court considers that actual and effective knowledge of the infringement does not occur until the publication of the decision in the Official Journal of the European Union**, in this case on 30 June 2020.
In addition, the existence of a prior out-of-court complaint, which interrupted the time limit in accordance with Article 1973 of the Civil Code, was also taken into account. This doctrine has already been included in other similar judgments, as explained in our guide on [how to interrupt the limitation period in competition actions].
The expert report prepared by the engineer Frank Rodríguez Trouwborst was decisive for the judicial estimation of the damage. Although it was criticised by SCANIA, the Court acknowledged that it exceeded the evidentiary sufficiency threshold, which made it possible to quantify the damage at 5% of the purchase price of the truck.
This judicial estimation technique is particularly useful when the damage cannot be determined with mathematical precision, but there is a reasonable economic basis. You can find more information in our analysis on [how to calculate the cost overrun in cartel claims].
This result would not have been possible without the procedural guidance of our partner Jorge Ballester Antón, senior lawyer at Summons Abogados, nor without the technical support of expert witness Frank Rodríguez Trouwborst, a specialist in competition economics.
At Summons Abogados, we continue to work to offer our clients a technical, rigorous and effective approach in the defence of their rights against infringements of Competition Law. If you are considering a claim for the purchase of one or more trucks between 1997 and 2011, you can contact our team for a [free case assessment].
