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This settlement is closed!
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A $19.5 million settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit involving an alleged conspiracy to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize the prices of lithium ion battery cells found in a wide variety of consumer products, including (but are not limited to) laptops, notebooks, netbooks or tablets; mobile phones; smartphones; cameras; camcorders; digital video cameras; digital audio players; and power tools..
If you purchased a lithium ion battery or electronic devices that contain a lithium ion battery since 2000, you may be entitled to compensation from the antitrust class action settlement if it is approved.
According to the lithium ion battery class action lawsuit, the defendants and co-conspirators conspired to raise and fix the prices of lithium ion batteries for more than a decade, resulting in indirect purchasers of the lithium ion batteries being overcharged for the batteries and products containing the batteries.
“No later than 2000, Defendants were engaging in collusive discussions – including face-to-face meetings and telephone conversations – for the purpose of providing confidential, highly-sensitive information to each other concerning their manufacture and sale of Lithium Ion Batteries,” the antitrust class action lawsuit states.
“By engaging in these collusive meetings, and systematically sharing highly-sensitive, competitive information, Defendants sought to, and did, achieve their joint goal of elevating Lithium Ion Battery prices.”
Sony Corporation, Sony Energy Devices Corporation and Sony Electronics Inc. have agreed to settle the lithium ion battery antitrust class action lawsuit. These defendants are currently the only ones to agree to a settlement. The litigation against the non-settling defendants is ongoing.
The non-settling defendants include: LG Chem Ltd., LG Chem America Inc., Samsung SDI Co. Ltd., Samsung SDI America Inc., Panasonic Corporation, Panasonic Corporation of North America, Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., Sanyo North America Corporation, Hitachi Maxell Ltd., Maxell Corporation of America, NEC Corporation, NEC Tokin Corporation and Toshiba Corporation.
UPDATE: On Dec. 7, 2016, LG Chem Ltd. agreed to pay $39 million to settle allegations that it conspired to fix the prices of lithium-ion batteries.
UPDATE 2: On March 17, 2017, NEC, Toshiba, Panasonic and Hitachi Maxell agreed to $50 million worth of settlements to resolve allegations that they conspired to fix prices on lithium-ion batteries.
Who’s Eligible
Class Members of the lithium ion battery settlement include all persons and entities that indirectly purchased a lithium ion battery or lithium ion products in the United States from one or more of the defendants between Jan. 1, 2000 and May 31, 2011.
According to the lithium ion battery class action settlement, the term “Lithium Ion Battery” or “Li-Ion Battery” means Lithium Ion Battery Cell or Lithium Ion Battery Pack (see below for definitions).
Lithium Ion Battery Cell (or “Li-Ion Cell”): Cylindrical, prismatic or polymer cell used for the storage of power that is rechargeable and uses lithium ion technology.
Lithium Ion Battery Pack: Lithium Ion Battery Cells that have been assembled into a pack (regardless of the number of Lithium Ion Cells contained in the pack).
Lithium Ion Battery Products (or “Li-Ion Products”): Products that are manufactured, marketed and/or sold by any of the defendants and which contain one or more Lithium Ion Battery Cells manufactured by the defendants and/or their co-conspirators. Lithium Ion Battery Products include (but are not limited to) laptop, notebook, netbook or tablet computers; mobile phones; smartphones; cameras; camcorders; digital video cameras; digital audio players; and power tools.
Potential Award
There is currently no money available to Class Members, and it is not yet known how much each claimant will be eligible to receive. We will update this post when more information becomes available. Click the “Follow Article” button at the top of the page to receive notifications of updates via email.
Proof of Purchase
N/A. There is currently no Claim Form available as the Claims Period is not yet open. For the latest updates on the lithium ion battery settlement, you may sign up for updates from the Settlement Administrator here.
Register for Updates
Claim Form Deadline
N/A. There is currently no Claim Form available. You can use the link above to register for updates to this class action settlement from the official Settlement Administrator, or you can keep checking www.TopClassActions.com for the latest updates.
Class Members who wish to opt out of or object to the lithium ion battery settlement must do so no later than Sept. 22, 2016.
Case Name
In re: Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litigation – All Indirect Purchaser Actions, MDL No. 2420, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Final Hearing
11/8/2016
Settlement Website
Claims Administrator
Lithium Batteries Indirect Sony Settlement
P.O. Box 173006
Milwaukee, WI 53217
1-800-952-0581
Class Counsel
Steven N. Williams
COTCHETT PITRE & MCCARTHY LLP
Jeff Friedman
HAGENS BERMAN SOBOL SHAPIRO LLP
Brendan P. Glackin
LIEFF CABRASER HEIMANN & BERNSTEIN LLP
Defense Counsel
Counsel for the Sony Defendants:
COOLEY LLP
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29 thoughts onLithium Ion Batteries Indirect Purchaser Class Action Settlement
I don’t know if anyone is still following this thread, but in case claimants aren’t aware, this settlement has been in the process of distribution for quite some time. HOWEVER, some class members (like myself) are getting stiffed for their payments. Many smaller claimants like myself requested digital payments. Mine never arrived. When I found out that payments were in process and contacted the settlement administrator, I was told that my payment failed and that I was too late to request a new payment. I have heard and read online that some claimants were asked to provide a new email address to the claims administrator and in turn had payments to the new email address fail. I have a technical background and the explanations provided by the settlement administrator regarding why payments are failing do not make sense to me. Furthermore, the company through whom these digital payments are being made (Blackhawk Networks) have a huge number of complaints against them posted online from things as simple as their product not working as advertised, to data breach problems, to questionable data protection policies with their customer support staff located outside the USA in Central America, to claims of outright theft of their client funds left on payment cards. Probably this company should never have even been allowed to administer payments to claimants.
Class counsel wants to redistribute the unclaimed/failed settlement payments to the (mostly larger) claimants that were already paid, and in many cases who received payment by wire transfer or check. This violates state law in most states, as unclaimed funds should be echeated to the rightful owners.
I am weighing options and whether to file an objection with the court with regards to the redistribution plan presented by Class Counsel or some other motion seeking relief for myself and other class members in a similar position.
If you are reading this information and have also had similar problems with this settlement and receipt of your settlement payment, please feel free to contact me at reversethechargeobjection[at]automatic-mail-server.net — note that this address should be formatted in the usual fashion with [at] as @. I have formatted as I have here so that the address doesn’t get picked up by robots and I end up flooded with nonrelevant junk mail.
Please only contact me if you are a class member that submitted an approved claim but failed to get paid. I believe that if I can either aggregate statements from other settlement members in any paperwork that I submit, or if other class members in turn object based on similar grounds, we will stand a higher chance that the judge will take the time to review what has occurred and the possible improprieties that seem to be occurring between Epiq (the settlement administrator), Digitalpay/Sipree, and Blackhawk Networks.
And who knows, if we get enough information we may find that a nice class action lawsuit against these administrators and payment providers comes out of that due to their mismanagement of this and likely other settlements.
Ray Pedraza
***UPDATE*** On April 7, 2023, Counsel submitted a proposed distribution plan to the Court . This plan lays out the schedule and the options for class members to receive payment. While claims are no longer being accepted, class members should begin receiving their payments in the coming weeks.
Is there an update on this?
5 months later now we dealing with the pandemic, which will take longer