A $150m legal claim brought against a group of shipping companies over a six-year cartel transporting cars to the UK is set to be heard in early 2025.
The 10-week trial was pencilled in on Thursday at the first hearing since English appeal court judges ruled last year that the case should go ahead.
“We will put in the diary, in pencil, a 10-week trial in the first quarter of 2025,” said Marcus Smith, the chair of the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
“We will find a tribunal to deal with it. We will make that work.”
The US-style group action brought by prominent consumer advocate Mark McLaren is seeking compensation for UK motorists who bought new cars over nine years.
He claims they were overcharged because of delivery price-fixing between the carriers.
Estimated losses to British motorists range from £71m to £143m, with interest added. The claim is reported to amount to up £60 per new car.
The case follows a decision by the European Commission in 2018 to censure vehicle carriers Mitsui OSK Lines, K Line, NYK Line, Compania Sud Americana de Vapores, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics and its sister company, Eukor.
Imposing a fine of €395m on four of the five, the EC found the carriers had broken EU competition law by fixing prices, allocating business and exchanging commercially sensitive information. MOL avoided a fine after it revealed the existence of the cartel.
The shipping companies had tried but failed to get the UK class action case kicked out because of an error by the tribunal about how the pricing of car transport was calculated.
The appeal court accepted there had been an error but said the case should go ahead. But it left the pricing issue unresolved.
Smith invited lawyers from both sides to come up with their own versions of how pricing worked before they started “carving chunks” out of their opponents.
He said the case was like “two ships passing in the night, two independent theories… but only one can be right”.
Smith had suggested a trial in 2024 but lawyers for both sides said that was not enough time.
The trial pushed into the following year, when “ships that pass in the night might meet at the port, finally”, said Mark Hoskins, counsel for three of the carriers.
The claim includes UK motorists and companies who bought or leased new cars affected by the price-fixing activity between October 2006 and September 2015.
The claim in London also included Nissan Motor Car Carrier Co. It was fined by the Indian authorities in January last year along with NYK Line, K Line and MOL for colluding on car carrier rates.
Car carrier owners have separately faced legal claims worldwide from car makers who claim they were overcharged.
Owners have benefited from lucrative long-term fixtures over the last year owing to a shortage of tonnage.
