Lee & Ko, in its representation of BMW, successfully defended all civil claims filed by individuals and companies that purchased or leased vehicles from BMW.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (“KFTC”) determined that German automobile manufacturers engaged in collusion in violation of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (“MRFTA”) by agreeing to utilize the feed-forward mode function for selective catalytic reduction (“SCR”) systems in diesel passenger cars in 2006 and imposed administrative fines and corrective orders.

In this regard, individuals and companies that purchased or leased vehicles from the German automobile manufacturers filed a lawsuit for damages claiming the said German companies violated the MRFTA and Clean Air Conservation Act (“CACA”) for collusion related to the SCR agreement and size of urea tanks, and for violating the Fair Labelling and Advertising Act by concealing this fact in labels and advertisements.

The key issue in this case was whether the agreements resulted in damage to purchasers of the vehicles, to which Lee & Ko persuasively argued that (i) the alleged agreements did not cause any financial or emotional distress damages to the plaintiffs and (ii) the plaintiffs failed to provide any detailed evidence of incurring damages.

As a result, the court ruled that the alleged collusion on urea tank size did not constitute collusion, the SCR agreement did not cause any damage to the plaintiffs, and that BMW was not liable for damages to the plaintiffs for false advertising and labelling because it did not violate the CACA.

Even though follow-on damage lawsuits were a possibility depending on the outcome of the lawsuit, the proactive defense by Lee & Ko, which had represented BMW from the KFTC’s investigation, resulted in all claims against BMW being rejected by the court. This result was critical as it prevented follow-on damage lawsuits.

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