- Previously, the sale of timber in the Southwest was illegal.
Stuttgart Higher Regional Court
The wood marketing of the state of Baden-Württemberg from 1978 to 2015 has been found to have violated antitrust law by a ruling of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court. In this context, a consortium of 36 sawmills is entitled to claim damages in principle, as the court announced. The amount of the claims will now be decided by the Stuttgart Regional Court. The decision of the Higher Regional Court is not yet final.
Not all procurement procedures of the sawmills are affected by the positive basic decision. It only concerns claims for damages where the purchase was handled through the state and those where the purchase of roundwood from a third party can be proven by invoices or other documents, ruled the Civil Senate of the Higher Regional Court. The rest of the lawsuit was dismissed as unfounded by the Senate.
The state and its forest administration had previously marketed wood from state forests as well as from municipal and private forests centrally, which resulted in a monopoly position. The Federal Cartel Office classified this as a violation of competition law in 2015 and prohibited the sales practice. Since then, there has been a legal dispute on this topic. Meanwhile, the state has reformed the controversial forest administration.
Originally, the lawsuit demanded payment of cartel damage compensation of around 450 million euros. The Regional Court dismissed the lawsuit in 2022 in its entirety. In the opinion of the chamber at the time, the companies bundled in an so-called compensation society did not become holders of any cartel damage claims of the sawmills against the state and were therefore not entitled to bring the lawsuit. Against this decision, an appeal was lodged by the consortium of sawmills.
The consortium of sawmills intends to pursue their claims for damages in the matter of the violated antitrust law at the The Court of First Instance, following the ruling by the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court that their claims, related to purchases handled through the state or proven by invoices, are valid in principle. If the amount of the claims is not satisfactorily determined by the Stuttgart Regional Court, the consortium may choose to escalate the case further in the legal process.
