*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. 1. Competition law before the ordinary courts. In preparation for this year's 2008 National Lawyers' Convention, under the general theme of "Competition and Competitiveness", the Bordeaux Bar Association has chosen to deal with a highly topical issue at both the European and national levels: that of compensation for damages resulting from anti-competitive practices. This is why it has decided to deal with the subject of free competition law before the ordinary courts. Since 2003, the European Commission has taken a very close interest in this issue. It first commissioned a study report from Ashurst, which in 2004 revealed that victims of anti-competitive
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ARTICLE: PRIVATE ENFORCEMENT - US EXPERIENCE - CLASS ACTIONS - DAMAGES ACTIONS FOR BREACH OF THE EC ANTITRUST RULES - DISCOVERY RULES - TREBLE DAMAGES - PRIMA FACIE EVIDENCE - CONTINGENT FEES - “ONE-WAY COST” RULE - CY-PRES DOCTRINE
Private enforcement: The US approach
What could we learn from the American experience in private enforcement with its strong and weak aspects? The answer is troublesome as bias and caricature are often prevailing in France as well as in the United States. As a matter of fact, this experience is not easy to grasp because of the American opinions themselves. Some American observers sincerely underline and deplore the lack of statistics and reliable data. The best example regards class actions. That is the reason why the debates are so controversial in the United States and why their experience is undermined. Anyway, echoes of those debates are useful to our own debates in Europe. They could inspire us to elaborate our own solutions. This article scrutinizes some points and put them in perspective with the White paper written by the DG COMP “Damages actions for breach of the EC antitrust rules”. In conclusion, discovery rules and treble damages are not put forward. But prima facie evidence, contingent fees, “one-way cost” rule, class action and cy-pres doctrine are considered to raise interesting possibilities.
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