Germany has become a key jurisdiction for cartel damages claims, despite the absence of an opt-out regime. The market has developed ways to bundle claims through an assignment structure. Germany’s highest civil court has now confirmed the viability of this model for antitrust cases and has set out the structural framework for large-scale assignment model litigation (German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ), decision of 12 May 2026, docket no. KZR 6/24).
The assignment model: German efficiency in real life
The German legislator has been slow to embrace collective redress. In contrast to the UK, Portugal or the Netherlands, there are no opt-out class actions. The German Verbandsklage, transposing the EU Representative Actions Directive (2020/1828), provides an opt-in mechanism for consumer disputes (or small enterprises); it is neither available for cartel damages claims, nor particularly attractive for funders who may only receive up to 10% of the proceeds of a case.
To fill this gap, the German market developed the assignment model: multiple cartel victims assign their damages claims to a claims vehicle – typically a company registered as a debt collection service provider under the German Legal Services Act. The vehicle then sues in its own name, in one consolidated action, on a contingency basis, usually backed by a third-party litigation funder.
Following initial reluctance by some lower courts, which stressed that the claims vehicle needed to be properly funded to cover any adverse costs risk, the model has been gradually validated. In previous decisions, the FCJ already confirmed that bundling claims is admissible, but open questions remained regarding the quality and quantity of collected claims, the involvement of the litigation funder in strategic decisions and potential conflicts of interest in the case of heterogenous claims.
The facts
The claimant Financialright Claims GmbH had collected damages claims for over EUR 500 million from 3,266 assignors based in 21 jurisdictions. These assignors had procured some 70,000 trucks from Daimler, MAN and other members of the European truck cartel. The transactions included purchases, hire-purchase agreements and leasing contracts, spanning direct and indirect acquisitions. The claimant operates on a contingency basis and is backed by a litigation funder under a 2017 funding agreement.
The FCJ found the claim to be an “exceptional case”, describing it as largely unsorted. It pointed to an 18,472-page statement of claim across 74 binders and a 49,386-page reply across 101 binders, in which the individual transactions were listed in largely unorganized form. The claimant admitted that it had largely relied on data uploaded by assignors via an online portal, without even checking each claim before dumping them on the court through the German arm of an American law firm.
Assignment model confirmed
Three findings of the FCJ show how bundled actions can be brought:
- Assignment model works for cartel damages claims
The FCJ reaffirmed that bundling claims by way of assignments is in line with German law. It also clarified that this holds true for cartel damages claims.
- Assignment model works for foreign assignors
The Court confirmed that claims of German and international assignors can be bundled. En passant, the FCJ clarified that the claimant may rely on German law for both.
- Assignment model requires proper examination of claims
The decision breaks new ground in defining the limits to claims bundling: Where the bundling is of such quantity and heterogeneity that no trial court could resolve the case within a reasonable time, and where the claimant’s lawyers filed claims that are, in the Court’s striking phrase, “unordered and admittedly partly unexamined”, the line between legitimate and abusive conduct is crossed.
Litigation funding admissibility
The FCJ took no issue with the litigation funder’s 33% share of the proceeds of the case, which was largely in line with market rates at the time. According to the court, it is also legitimate for a litigation vehicle to generate own revenues.
Yet the FCJ considered it a procedural error that the lower courts had not ordered the disclosure of the funding agreement. The defendants had plausibly pleaded – and the claimant’s own submissions tended to confirm – that the specific funding contract may oblige the claimant to a particular litigation strategy, including constraints on settlement. Given these submissions of the claimant, the lower court needs to examine whether there is a structural conflict of interest sufficient to render the underlying assignments void. The FCJ would view it critically if the funder had a right to lead (or veto) settlement negotiations. In the oral hearing, it was brought to the FCJ’s attention that the claimant’s original U.S.-headquartered lawyers held shares in the funder, and that there are separate disputes between the funder and the claimant.
How courts can deal with mass claims
The FCJ did not decide the case on the merits, but remanded it back to the lower instance, the Munich Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) with a clear – and remarkably detailed – set of operational instructions:
- Step one: disclosure and assessment of the litigation funding agreement
The lower court must first decide afresh, this time exercising its discretion properly, whether to order production of the litigation funding agreement. The FCJ finds that if third party funders have influence beyond mere rights to information, it must be determined on a case-by-case basis, by evaluating all relevant circumstances, whether a specific risk exists for conflicts of interest and the claimant’s right of standing. Only once standing has been re-assessed, and the assignments remain valid, the court may proceed with the second step.
- Step two: structuring and separating the proceedings
As the unstructured and voluminous claim was more than the lower court could swallow, the FCJ considers it necessary to break it up into several smaller cases. The lower court may decide on the details of the separation, for which the FCJ suggests considering (a) which assignors belong to the same corporate group; (b) which countries assignors (where not part of the same group) are based in; (c) a cap on the number of procurement transactions bundled in any single multi-group action. The FCJ also points to a possible separation of claims by different market levels and grouping by similarity of contract templates. The FCJ expects the claimant to play a significant role in structuring the proceedings, by filing structured, separate sets of pleadings within six months. The claimant’s failure to comply allows the lower court to dismiss the action as inadmissible on grounds of abuse of process (Rechtsmissbrauch).
What the judgment means for other cases
Three messages emerge for other cases involving claims bundling and litigation financing.
- First, cartel damages actions can be brought in German courts with the assignment model. The FCJ imposes on claims aggregators a duty to organise their pleadings in a way that allows a German court to give effective relief in reasonable time; noncompliance could result in the inadmissibility of the claim.
- Second, combining claims of German and international cartel victims, even of companies operating on different market levels, can be admissible. The court may separate different groups of claims. These separation orders have a welcome side effect for the court: Where a single large case is broken up into several smaller ones, (moderate) statutory court fees are payable for each of them. Hence, separation orders may neither be arbitrary, nor go beyond what is necessary. Several German courts have demonstrated their ability to handle large cases effectively, and their ever-growing experience will allow them to do so even more going forward.
- Third, litigation funding is compatible with German law where funders do not have undue influence. Funding agreements may have to be disclosed and survive scrutiny; no dealings between the claimant, the funder or the lawyers should have to hide from the light of day.
Judges might be able to process larger bites if they did not have to chew so hard. The FCJ may have handed them stones rather than bread, as ultimately separating one large, bundled action into several smaller cases does not materially alter the overall task of assessing each individual transaction (in this case, each truck purchase). In this regard, help may be on the way from Europe’s highest court: Following requests for preliminary rulings from the Hoge Raad der Nederlanden (Cases Stichting Truck Cartel Recovery, C-425/25, and Stichting Cartel Compensation, C-426/25), the CJEU will decide whether – as a matter of EU law, with a view to the principle of effectiveness and at least for the purpose of determining the applicable law – a single cartel gives rise to a single claim for damages, rather than a separate claim for each purchase of a cartelized good. If courts were given discretion in this regard, even to estimate the number of transactions, this would significantly ease their burden and render damages actions more manageable.
Whether the Munich court can deliver the restructuring exercise the FCJ has commissioned, and whether the claimant’s litigation funding agreement will survive disclosure, will determine whether the case — almost a decade old at this point — finally reaches the merits stage.
Parallel truck cartel cases have meanwhile advanced, demonstrating the ability of German courts to deal with cartel damages actions effectively: Courts in Berlin and Stuttgart have already awarded damages in multiple truck cartel cases, the FCJ has handed down six decisions in truck cartel actions. The first-instance court in Munich heard experts and held quantification hearings, combining (rather than separating) several claims during a weeklong truck cartel hearing in November 2025 and subsequent hearings in April 2026. This shows that, with the increasingly solid body of case law, German courts are willing and able to decide cases that are properly organized, in line with European standards.
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FCJ, judgment of 12 May 2026, case number KZR 6/24:
a) Cartel damages claims may in principle be asserted in a bundled action (Sammelklage) by a registered legal service provider (inkasso).
b) Where the manner in which the inkasso service provider has bundled the claims makes it, in an exceptional case, practically impossible for the civil courts to grant effective judicial relief, the court may impose a procedural order directed at preparing the necessary separation of the proceedings. A failure to comply with such an order constitutes an abuse of procedural rights that renders the action inadmissible.
c) The combining of assignors from different market levels in a single bundled action does not, at least where the inkasso service provider is contractually obliged to bundle claims of like kind, give rise as such to a conflict of interest leading to nullity of the assignments.
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