Settlement Reached in CRT Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit

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A settlement agreement has been proposed in the class action lawsuit accusing Philips Electronics North America Corp., Panasonic Corp., and Samsung SDI Co. Ltd., as well as Hitachi Ltd., and Toshiba Corp. of entering into price-fixing agreements for cathode ray tubes.

Plaintiffs, including indirect purchasers of the cathode ray tubes (CRTs), allege in their class action lawsuit that the technology companies had entered into illegal agreements to divide the market and limit supply to artificially up the price of CRTs and the products requiring them.

The CRT price-fixing class action lawsuits were first centralized into multidistrict litigation (MDL) in 2008. The MDL includes both direct purchasers of cathode ray tube products such as computer monitors as well as indirect purchasers, such as people who bought PCs with both a display and central processing unit and alleges that they paid a premium due to anticompetitive practices of the various tech companies producing monitors and other displays.

According to documents filed with California federal court, Samsung SDI agreed to the largest payout, $225 million, and Philips agreed to the second largest at $175 million to be awarded to the indirect purchasers. Additionally, Panasonic will pay $70 million, Toshiba $33 million and Hitachi $28 million. Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. And LG Electronics entered into earlier settlements with the indirect purchasers amounting to $30 million. In total, indirect purchasers will be awarded $563 million.

“The settlement negotiations with settling defendants were hard-fought and at times contentious,” the indirect purchasers say in their settlement proposal. “Each settlement was reached only after extensive, arm’s-length negotiations between counsel for the settling defendant and plaintiffs,” they continue.

Trial in the class action lawsuit was set to begin in March, but the parties began entering into settlement agreements starting early this year. According to court documents, the settlements apply to both a nationwide Class and buyers from 21 states who purchased products containing CRTs, such as televisions and computer monitors. Residents of Illinois, Oregon and Washington are not included in the nationwide Class, however, because those states’ attorneys general are suing to recover separately on behalf of their citizens.

The tech companies have also indicated they would cooperate with the indirect purchasers as they continued to pursue the class action lawsuit. “The cooperation provisions are material and valuable terms of the Settlements. They enhanced the settlement prospects with the remaining defendants because they obligated Settling Defendants, to varying degrees, to provide cooperation to the Plaintiffs in prosecuting the remaining Defendants, including authentication of documents, producing witnesses for interviews, depositions and/or trial, and providing other assistance,” write the plaintiffs in their motion.

For more information about the CRT price-fixing settlements with indirect purchasers, visit the CRT Antitrust Litigation Class Action Settlement or www.CRTSettlement.com. No money is currently available from the class action settlements as the attorneys for the Class are continuing to pursue the litigation.

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The indirect purchasers are represented by Mario N. Alioto, Joseph M. Patane and Lauren C. Capurro of Trump Alioto Trump & Prescott LLP.

The direct purchasers are represented by Guido Saveri, R. Alexander Saveri, Geoffrey C. Rushing and Travis L Manfredi of Saveri & Saveri Inc.

The CRT Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 3:07-cv-05944, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On March 11, 2020, a $542 million settlement deal was reached after customers claimed tech companies colluded to fix prices of cathode ray tubes.