Benrath gas station case
The Benrath petrol station case is a fundamental decision by the Reich Court on systematic price undercutting ( dumping ) from 1931.
facts
“The plaintiff, who has owned a gas station in B. [ Benrath ] for many years , obtained his car fuel from the first defendant, the Rh.-D. Mineralölwerke AG; this brought the fuel into circulation under its trademark “Stellin”, later under the trademark “ Shell ”. After the termination of his fixed contractual relationship with the first defendant, the plaintiff obtained products from several of the five sued companies without price fixing to cover his needs . For their part, the defendants divided Germany into zones in May 1928 according to the level of petrol station prices, which they always set uniformly within the same zone. This agreement was soon joined by a number of other large companies in the same line of business. These companies and the defendants formed a convention which established the "Conditions for the Sale of Car Fuels" of October 1, 1928. The members undertook to comply with certain guidelines for the sale of their goods in order to limit the negative consequences of mutual competition as much as possible and to consolidate the sales organization they had set up. Although the members of the convention did not enter into any explicit binding with regard to petrol station sales prices, they agreed that they would agree on these prices on a case-by-case basis. The success was that the petrol station sales prices of the convention members in the individual zones actually matched.
For Amt B., which belongs to the second zone (Rhineland), the petrol station prices of the later convention members for petrol were ℛℳ 0.29 before the convention was concluded . per liter. This price was also accepted by the plaintiff, who had obtained his supplies from The T. Company in Br. Since February 1929; with her he concluded a long-term supply contract. After the conclusion of the convention, the companies belonging to it carried out a general price increase: for the second zone the price of gasoline was increased to 0.33 ℛℳ. The prices of the higher quality fuels benzene and gasoline-benzene mixture, which are always higher than the gasoline price, were set correspondingly higher. As early as October 24, 1928, however, the convention companies set the gasoline price for the second zone at ℛℳ 0.32. down. The plaintiff, on the other hand, kept his price of 9 0.29. for gasoline solid. As a result, its sales increased while those of the defendants decreased. After unsuccessful attempts to induce the plaintiff to increase his price to the convention prices, the defendants set the petrol price at 0,2 0.28 on 25 February 1929 solely for their pumps in B. down. Thereupon the plaintiff reduced his gasoline price to 0.26 ℛℳ., Whereupon the defendants their own for the office B. to 0.25 ℛℳ. and generally instructed the owners of their petrol stations to continue to undercut the plaintiff under all circumstances, and this - as the plaintiff claims, but the defendants deny - always by 0.01. [...] "
The decision
The case takes place at a time when the legal situation was completely different than it is today: in particular, cartels, as can be seen from the unexcited description of such in the facts, were only limited by the Cartel Ordinance of 1923 - i.e. practically not at all. Accordingly, the Reichsgericht had to judge the case only on the basis of the UWG .
With its judgment, the court introduced the concept of performance competition into German fair trading law, based on an expert opinion by Nipperdey . Unlike the latter, who thought that the cartel had to be able to prevail due to its efficiency, the RG classified the behavior of the defendant as a competition for obstacles and thus immoral i. S. d. the old general clause of § 1 UWG old version.
Current legal situation
Today the case would have to be judged according to both cartel and fair trading law .
Antitrust law
Undercutting of competitive prices by cartels, as in the present case, violates Section 19 IV and Section 20 I GWB. Art. 102 TFEU is also relevant .
Fairness law
Today, price undercutting, provided it is not already prohibited by antitrust law (see above), for example if the players are not dominant or strong in the market, could be implemented through Section 3 I i. V. m. 4 No. 4 UWG. However, there is a fundamental freedom from undercutting. Special circumstances, such as an intention to suppress or destroy, have to be added to justify an unfairness. In the present case, such was the case, so that the behavior according to today's standards also according to § 3 I i. V. m. § 4 No. 4 UWG would be unfair.
Individual evidence
- ↑ RG, December 18, 1931 - II 514/30 = RGZ 134, 342
- ↑ full text. opinionioiuris.de
- ↑ RGBl. I, pp. 1067, 1090.
- ^ Nipperdey: Competition and Existence Destruction . 1930.
- ↑ On the whole: Loewenheim, Meessen, Riesenkampff: Kartellrecht . 2nd Edition. 2009. Section 24 marginal no. 55 ff.
- ^ Sosnitza: Cases on competition law . 6th edition. P. 7 f.
- ↑ BGH, judgment of October 2, 2008 - I ZR 48/06 - GRUR 2009, 416 - Lowest kitchen price guarantee.
