On 4 July 2024, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) handed down a judgement in which it ruled that the concept of the place where the harmful event occurred did not include the registered office of the parent company bringing an action seeking compensation for damage suffered exclusively by its subsidiaries due to the anti-competitive activities of a third party.
This judgement was handed down in response to a request for a preliminary ruling filed by the Hungarian Supreme Court (Kúria) in the context of proceedings between the Hungarian company MOL Magyar Olaj-és Gázipari Nyrt. (MOL) and Mercedes-Benz Group AG (Mercedes-Benz). These proceedings were filed following the adoption of Commission Decision C (2016) 4673, which declared the existence of a cartel created for the purpose of coordinating the gross price of trucks, a cartel in which Mercedes-Benz had participated. During the time that the cartel existed, MOL’s subsidiaries acquired several trucks from Mercedes-Benz. As a consequence. MOL filed a claim for damages due to the extra cost that its subsidiaries had unfairly paid.
The complaint was filed with the Hungarian courts, since, according to the argument put forward by MOL, the place where the harmful event had occurred was the registered office of the parent company, as the central point for the financial interests and net worth of the corporate group that it formed with its subsidiaries. This argument was based on the fact that, since the concept of an economic unit gives rise to joint and several liability for infringements of competition law, the same principle should apply in reverse. In other words, it should be possible to regard the parent company’s registered office as the place in which the damage had materialised, even though this damage had been suffered exclusively by its subsidiaries.
The ECJ ultimately rejected this argument on the grounds that, if it were to accept it, then this would go against the objectives of proximity and predictability of the rules governing international competition and consistency between the forum and the applicable law. As the Court itself states in its judgement, the courts and tribunals that are best placed to hear these kinds of actions in civil proceedings, according to the Court’s own case law, are those of the Member State in which the affected market is located.
Furthermore, the rejection of this argument does not raise any obstacle against the possibility of claiming compensation for damages, since the alleged victims will always have the opportunity to apply to the courts in the place in which the infringing party is domiciled, or the courts in the place in which the goods were purchased, or the courts in the place in which the company that made the purchases in question has its registered office.
