Amsterdam District Court renders interim judgment in expedited trucks case

The Amsterdam District Court rendered an interim judgment on 15 April 2026 (ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2026:3734) in antitrust follow-on damages litigation that followed the European Commission decisions of 2016 and 2017 (case AT.39824), in which the European Commission imposed fines totalling approximately 3.81 billion euros on several truck manufacturers for competition law infringements. Following the decisions, several thousands of claimants across Europe claim compensation for damages allegedly suffered as a result of the competition law infringements. 

In the follow-on damages proceedings at hand, Retail Cartel Damages Claims S.A ("CDC") claims compensation on behalf of more than a thousand underlying claimants for damages allegedly suffered as a result of the competition law infringements on the truck market. CDC was the first to initiate proceedings against the truck manufacturers in the Netherlands. 

As CDC had substantiated its claims much better than other claimants, amongst others by submitting several extensive expert reports and detailed information and documentation on a per truck basis, the CDC-I proceedings were separated from the first group of joined cases. As such, the CDC-I proceedings were expedited and follow a distinct and accelerated timeline from the other Dutch trucks cases. The CDC-I proceedings are the first and only Dutch trucks case that has reached the damages phase. 

In this interim judgment in the CDC-I proceedings, the Amsterdam District Court rendered a judgment on several key topics and provided guidelines on how the alleged damages should be established. 

Alleged overcharge and lingering effects 

The Amsterdam District Court starts by concluding that a regression analysis is the appropriate instrument for calculating any alleged overcharge, and that such analysis must be conducted by means of a during-and-after analysis. As such, the quality of the dataset on which the analysis is based and the control variables used are of great importance for the reliability and accuracy of (the outcomes of) a regression analysis. Nevertheless, the Court emphasises that calculating the extent of any alleged damages is inherently complex and that any regression analysis is necessarily an approximation of reality, rather than an exact calculation thereof. 

In these proceedings, CDC and the truck manufacturers have all submitted extensive during-and-after analyses and responses to each other's reports. In addition, the Amsterdam District Court acknowledges that the economists engaged by both CDC and the truck manufacturers are all respected experts in their field and that there is no single correct or ideal method for conducting a regression analysis in a case such as the trucks case.

The Amsterdam District Court confirms that – under Dutch law – CDC must assert and substantiate the extent of any damages allegedly suffered. On that basis, the Court takes the extensive reports by CDC's economists as its starting point and finds that the dataset used therein is representative and sufficiently large and accurate for the regression analysis conducted by CDC's economists. The Amsterdam District Court ultimately holds that, taking everything into consideration, the report by CDC's economists can serve as a basis for estimating the alleged overcharge percentage in the CDC-I proceedings, notwithstanding the uncertainties inherent in any regression analysis. Based on the extensive information and the detailed expert reports submitted by CDC, the Amsterdam District Court ultimately estimates the alleged overcharge at 7% for CDC's underlying parties.

With regard to the question whether CDC’s assignors could have experienced any lingering effects, the Amsterdam District Court considers that it cannot determine the correct (effective) end date of the infringement period itself. That being said, it finds the substantiation of the end date alleged by CDC's economists to be convincing. Therefore, the Amsterdam District Court adopts the lingering effects calculated by CDC's economists in their report and determines that the alleged lingering effects continued until 30 May 2013 for CDC's underlying parties.

Pass-on

The truck manufacturers argued that CDC's underlying parties passed on (at least part of) the alleged overcharge to their own customers. In fact, several indirect purchasers have already filed claims against the truck manufacturers, asserting that any alleged overcharge was entirely passed on to them by CDC's underlying parties.

In this phase of the proceedings, the Amsterdam District Court considered the pass-on defence put forward by the truck manufacturers at a conceptual level only. Importantly, the Court concluded that the truck manufacturers had sufficiently demonstrated the plausibility that CDC's underlying parties passed on at least part of the alleged overcharge to their own customers. In reaching this conclusion, the Court recognised the merits of the arguments and evidence put forward by the truck manufacturers in support of their pass-on defence, including the economic reports submitted by the truck manufacturers. The Amsterdam District Court therefore expressly refused to categorically reject the truck manufacturers’ pass-on defence, as CDC had requested. Instead, the Court concluded that the debate on pass-on will need to be continued in further detail, and the parties will be given the opportunity to exchange views on how and when this debate can best be conducted. 

Damages relating to alleged delayed introduction of EURO standards

The Amsterdam District Court rejected CDC’s claim for damages as a result of the alleged delayed introduction of trucks compliant with new EURO standards in its entirety. The Amsterdam District Court considered that CDC’s reports lacked a proven methodology and a sufficiently substantiated theory of harm grounded in economic theory, as they relied entirely on theoretical assumptions and hypotheses that were not adequately evidenced. The Amsterdam District Court held that CDC failed to demonstrate that any ‘effective coordination’ of the alleged delay actually took place. Rather, the Amsterdam District Court found that CDC’s own evidence in fact confirms the absence of such effective coordination: the introduction dates of new emission standard trucks varied significantly across truck manufacturers, with several introducing compliant trucks well ahead of – in some cases years before – the applicable regulatory deadlines. As such, the Amsterdam District Court ruled that, insofar as the European Commission’s decision indicated that the truck manufacturers had aligned on delaying the introduction of new EURO standards, the actual conduct of the truck manufacturers in practice appeared to deviate from any such alleged arrangements. The existence or extent of the alleged emission damages was therefore insufficiently substantiated.

Volume of Commerce and Value of Commerce

The Amsterdam District Court's considerations on Volume of Commerce and Value of Commerce are closely tied to the manner in which the parties have asserted and contested their respective positions. Against that background, the Amsterdam District Court provides several guidelines for establishing the Volume of Commerce and the Value of Commerce in these specific proceedings initiated by CDC.

Conclusion and next steps

In its interim judgment dated 15 April 2026, the Amsterdam District Court decided on several issues in the expedited proceedings initiated by CDC, providing guidelines on how the alleged damages should be established (if any). The proceedings will now proceed with an exchange between the parties on their views on how to continue with regard to (i) establishing the Volume of Commerce, (ii) establishing the Value of Commerce, and (iii) the continuation of the pass-on debate.