Cases
Truck cartel
With two decisions in July 2016 and September 2017, the European Commission imposed record fines totaling around EUR 3.8 billion on the major European truck manufacturers Daimler, MAN, Volvo / Renault, DAF, Iveco and Scania.
Between 1997 and 2011, the manufacturers made agreements in violation of antitrust law on prices and gross price increases for the heavy and medium-duty trucks they manufactured and sold in the European economic area.
LitFin successfully submitted claims for 26,000 trucks in front of Dutch courts in the truck cartel case. Now, LitFin is preparing to submit thousands of claims for trucks acquired in the period between 01/2006 - 12/2014 in front of German courts.
Google Shopping
In 2017, the European Commission fined Google in relation to the Google Shopping case EUR 2.42 billion for abuse of a dominant market position. LitFin represents the claims of many large price-comparison portals from the several EU Member States that have been damaged by these anticompetitive practises. Claims for damage compensation currently amount to more than EUR 50 million. LitFin works closely with associations of damaged companies.
Wirecard
The Munich-based payment processor Wirecard has filed for insolvency on June 25th 2020 after a series of accounting scandals. As revealed, Wirecard's long time auditor EY failed to verify the existence of cash reserves in what appeared to be fraudulent bank statements. LitFin is a leading litigation funder which offers financing of a participation in a class action against Ernst & Young GmbH. The registered claim value of non-institutional investors financed by LitFin has exceeded EUR 500 mio. as of the end of 2020.
Pesticide cartel
The Bundeskartellamt fined at least 8 wholesalers of plant protection products in Germany a total of EUR 157 million in 2020 because these wholesalers entered into cartel agreements on uniform price lists, discounts and sales prices towards retailers and end customers. Any farmer who purchased plant protection products (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, etc.) directly or indirectly through intermediaries from one of the wholesalers involved in the cartel between 1 July 1998 and March 2016 or until the expiry of the subsequent period until 30 June 2016 is therefore entitled to compensation.
Toll
Germany, in contravention of European law, demanded 4-5% more from individual toll payers for heavy goods vehicles (over 7.5 tonnes) by including not only the cost of road operation but also the cost of traffic police in the toll. Any company that has paid tolls in Germany from 2005 to the present day should be entitled to a refund of the overpaid tolls, according to a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 28 October 2020. Visit our website to find out more about this case and how you can get your money back.
Apple AppStore & Google Play
Apple and Google may have abused their dominant position in the market with restrictive contracts in order to unlawfully sustain a monopoly in the app stores in Android and iOS. Under the In-App Purchase and Google Play payment processing systems, Apple and Google have charged app developers 30% commission for every sale made either directly in the Google Play or Apple App Store (paid apps) or within any particular application (in-app digital purchases), while they have not allowed developers to use any alternative system of processing payment transactions. Therefore, app developers who distributed their applications via Google Play or Apple App Store within EU countries and received payments via their proprietary billing systems may be entitled to claim compensation.
Google AdTech
According to the French Autorite de la Concurrence, Google abused its dominant position in the online advertising industry by self-preferencing its own services. Google acted in such a way that its SSP and ad server benefited each other to the detriment of competitors and also publishers. Google's practices in this case are also currently under investigation by the European Commission. LitFin is leading and financing a bundled claim on behalf of publishers all over the EEA. Publishers who sold online ad inventory through ad servers are invited to contact us and learn more about the possibility of claiming compensation.
Construction Cartel
All major Austrian construction companies illegaly colluded over 15 years (2002-2017) and established a cartel by partitioning the market and distributing public tenders internally. Competition on the entire Austrian construction market was therefore eliminated and hundreds of cities, states, towns and private companies damaged.