Scottish Councils are not time-barred from bringing competition law claims against truck manufacturers

 

Scottish Councils are not time-barred from bringing competition law claims against truck manufacturers

The Inner House of the Scottish Court of Session has given an opinion on whether Scottish local authorities are time barred in bringing claims for compensation against the trucks manufacturers who were found by the European Commission to have participated in an unlawful cartel, in breach of Article 101 of the TFEU.

Glasgow City Council’s claim exceeds £10 million.  West Dunbartonshire seeks compensation of about £2 million.  These two cases have been selected as the lead cases.

The truck manufacturers argued that the cases would be time-barred because they had not been brought within five years.  All of the affected transactions were more than five years old when the cases were launched and some were more than 20 years old.  However, the Scottish Commercial Court concluded that the local councils were not aware of the truck manufacturers' cartel until the Commission handed down its July 2016 infringement decision.

The case is interesting because it is the first Scottish case to consider limitation/prescription issues in a case involving a covert competition law infringement.

Glasgow City Council and West Dunbartonshire Council v VFS Financial Services Limited and others [2022] CSIH 1