A £1.5m settlement in a collective action has been granted by the Competition Appeal Tribunal – in a first for the jurisdiction.

The settlement agreement, believed to be a first for the tribunal in a collective action, is between Mark McLaren, class representative, and one of the defendants, Compania Sudamericana de Vapores S.A (CSAV). It was granted by Hodge Malek KC, Dr William Bishop and Eamonn Doran in a day-long hearing yesterday.

Of the £1.5m settlement, £1.12m will be for damages, £100,000 for the application costs and £280,000 for costs generally.

The tribunal directed that none of the £280,000 ‘is to be distributed or allocated to any specific litigator…[or] for something in particular until a further order of the tribunal’.

Part of the agreement settlement means CSAV, the smallest defendant in the cartel with an estimated market share of 1.7%, will be released from proceedings. The claim will continue against the other defendant groups.

Sitting as chair, Malek said: ‘It is not for this tribunal to reach a detailed and precise view of the merits of the case, this is not a mini trial. Litigation is expensive and uncertain. We cannot determine now, on the application as present, the process value of the claim and what is objectively speaking an amount liked to be awarded by the tribunal against the defendant at the end of the day but we are satisfied both the damages sum and costs sum are fair and reasonable.’

The agreement follows a European Commission settlement decision in February 2018 concerning the provision of deep-sea shipping services for new motor vehicles. It found that a cartel, made up of the defendants, operated between October 2006 and September 2015.

It is alleged that the original vehicle manufacturers paid too much for shipping charges and the higher prices were ultimately passed on to customers. More than 17m cars are said to have been affected by the price-fixing scheme, involving customers who bought vehicles from brands including Ford, Vauxhall and BMW.

The judge said: ‘If there was a significant sum going to be distributed to each member, it would make sense to have distribution [now] but if it is only going to be a relatively smaller sum for each person and it is probably going to be quite expensive to track them all down at this stage, it is just not worth doing.’

He added: ‘These proceedings, like many of these…are expensive. They are going to take a long time. It is to everybody’s benefit to take out defendants who are willing to settle as early as possible. The fewer parties we have, the less cost, the less complexity and the shorter the hearings.’

A trial is expected to be listed in early 2025.