Revival of the ‘claims assignment class action’ in German private antitrust enforcement (and beyond)

Corporate victims of anticompetitive practices by their suppliers regularly consider their possibilities to exercise their rights in the best interest of their company. On 13 July 2021, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) held that the ‘class action collection’ (Sammelklage-Inkasso) is permissible. Correcting a contrary trend followed by lower courts, the landmark AirDeal judgment of Germany’s supreme court fundamentally confirms the legality of the opt-in ‘assignment model’, i.e. the contractual transfer of claims for damages of numerous victims of the same infringement to a specialised third party for the purpose of bundling, analysis, and joint enforcement of these claims. This approach from a procedural economy perspective has become increasingly important all over Europe in recent years, especially for private antitrust cases due to a lack of effective collective redress mechanisms. In Germany, it has also been approved by a current reform of statutory law.

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The compatibility of Irish rules on champerty and maintenance with the EU damages directive

On 17 February 2017, EU Directive 2014/104 (the “Directive”) was transposed into Irish law by the European Union (Actions for Damages for Infringements of Competition Law) Regulations 2017 (the “Implementation Act”).  As widely acknowledged, the implementation of the Directive aims to facilitate the enforcement of claims for damages resulting from infringements of competition law before the courts of EU […]

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