The American Antitrust Institute (aai) has published a new working paper entitled “Private Recoveries in International Cartel Cases Worldwide: What do the Data Show”?, which includes data on private actions in Canada.
Abstract:
“Despite being around for more than a century in the United States, the role played by ‘treble damages suits’ in cartel enforcement is controversial … Some think of them as exemplars of a hyper litigious society, while others perceive them as essential elements in a rational cartel-enforcement program. In the EU and other jurisdictions outside the United States, the desirability and ideal design of private rights of action are currently matters of intense debates … The purpose of this paper is to examine the size and role played by private damages recoveries in antitrust suits directed at contemporary hard-core international price-fixing cartels. After discussing the data source for this paper, I then describe the amounts and trends in U.S. settlements in private antitrust suits since 1990, the dominance of U.S. cases in the world, the extent to which private suits follow government investigations, and the severity of private recoveries relative to affected sales and to damages caused by the cartels. The last ratios can be used to judge the ex post deterrence power of current monetary cartel penalties. This paper elaborates and extends a book chapter by the author …”
Some of the Canadian data in this recent aai paper include statistics showing cartel damages between 1990 and 2012 of more than $436 million (second to the U.S.), that nearly all private competition/antitrust suits in Canada are follow on suits following U.S. actions (only 10 of the 130 sample Canadian recoveries were in relation to solely non-U.S. actions), the U.S. is the leader in nominal settlement and restitution amounts representing 93% worldwide (with Canada representing 1% and the rest of the world 6%), that Canada is relatively severe in penalties imposing a median amount of fines around 15% (median fines of about 17.5% for global cartels). This study, however, appears to confuse somewhat penalties imposed under the Competition Act (e.g., guilty pleas) with private civil action settlements under the Act. Nevertheless, it includes rather a lot of information and data.
For a copy of the aai’s paper see: Private Recoveries in International Cartel Cases Worldwide: What do the Data Show?
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