Air Cargo Antitrust Litigation Ends in $1.2B Worth of Settlements

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A federal judge has signed off on the last few settlements ending a decade-long air cargo antitrust litigation.

U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan approved the last four multi-million dollar settlements last week, following a fairness hearing.

The last of the settlements include a $100 million agreement with Polar Air and a $50 million agreement with Air China.

The litigation accused dozens of airlines of conspiring to artificially increase the price of air cargo shipping.

Plaintiffs alleged the effects of this price-fixing scheme reached nearly every business that shipped products to, from, or inside the U.S. since 2000.

The air cargo antitrust litigation began with a single complaint filed in February 2006 against about three dozen air cargo carriers.

Investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission found evidence that the defendants had met and planned to fix the shipping rates for certain air cargo routes.

As the litigation progressed, it got enormously complicated. Discovery at one point yielded over 18 million pages of documents and 83 witness depositions.

With that much evidence, the time and expense that would be required to continue the claims to trial gave parties a significant incentive to settle.

By February 2014, parties reached partial settlements worth more than $750 million.

In April 2015, a $99 million settlement with EVA Airways pushed total recoveries over the $1 billion mark.

Air cargo defendants who hadn’t settled by that point faced significant advances by the plaintiffs in the summer of 2015. That July, the court granted certification for a plaintiff Class consisting of direct purchasers of air cargo services.

The next month, plaintiffs won cross motions for summary judgment. The court scheduled the first trials to begin the next year.

In October 2015, four defendant airlines entered into a settlement agreement worth $360 million. That settlement left four other air cargo defendants scheduled to go to trial in March 2016.

Many of the other airlines implicated in the air cargo lawsuit settled their claims by February of this year.

As certified by the court in August 2015, the plaintiff Class consists of persons or entities who purchased air cargo shipping services from any of the defendants or their related businesses between Jan. 1, 2000 and Sept. 30, 2006.

“We are pleased that the court granted final approval to each and every settlement obtained during this litigation, and we look forward to distributing these funds to those who suffered from this alleged collusion,” said Hollis Salzman of Robins Kaplan LLP.

The air cargo plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Hollis L. Salzman and Meegan Hollywood of Robins Kaplan LLP; Robert N. Kaplan, Gregory K. Arenson and Gary L. Specks of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP; Howard J. Sedran and Austin B. Cohen of Levin Fishbein Sedran & Berman; and Michael D. Hausfeld, Brent W. Landau, Hilary K. Scherrer and Melinda R. Collidge of Hausfeld LLP.

The Air Cargo Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Air Cargo Shipping Services Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 1775, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.