Providing Expert Evidence in the Second Wave UK Trucks Litigation

NERA provided expert economic evidence for the more than 80 claimants in the Second Wave Trucks litigation at the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in the UK. The team worked with 10 leading law firms to analyse more than 25 years of truck pricing data and evidence to assess the effect of the European Trucks Cartel. 

NERA experts produced several expert statements and reports submitted to the CAT and testified on expert issues in the run-up to trial. The proceedings settled successfully before trial commenced in September 2026. 

The case demonstrates NERA’s ability to deploy a large team to answer complex conceptual and empirical questions in the courtroom.  

Medium and heavy trucks play a critical role in the economy across retail, logistics, construction, manufacturing, and public services. In 2016, the European Commission found that leading truck manufacturers participated in a cartel affecting pricing of medium and heavy trucks from January 1997 to January 2011 and imposed fines totalling more than 3.8 billion euro. The finding led to follow-on damages claims across Europe.  

In the UK, the CAT grouped claims brought by more than 80 major businesses and public bodies—including Asda, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and John Lewis, Iceland, Currys, Argos, Morrisons, and Boots; Arla, Balfour Beatty, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, ABF, and LafargeHolcim; Scottish Water, the City of Edinburgh Council, Fife Council, and numerous other local authorities—into the Second Wave Trucks Proceedings.

Behind the litigation were the vehicles that move food to supermarkets, materials to construction sites, industrial gases to customers, goods through distribution networks and equipment, and services around the country and the fleets used to provide essential public services. 

Senior Managing Director Grant Saggers was appointed the claimants’ Joint Expert on Overcharge. Senior Consultant Daniel Sullivan undertook a separate expert role on Value of Commerce for the Scottish claimants. 

Mr. Saggers assessed whether, and to what extent, the cartel affected the prices paid by each claimant for trucks supplied by seven truck manufacturers during the 14-year infringement period. The scale of the exercise required analysing each of the seven manufacturers in detail to estimate what prices would have been absent the cartel while capturing the differences that mattered by manufacturer, model, emission standard, customer, purchasing channel, timing, and commercial terms. It required NERA to research and reconstruct how one of Europe’s most important industrial supply chains had evolved over more than 25 years. 

NERA examined the relationship between list prices, discounts, and transaction prices; changes in truck models and specifications; manufacturer- and customer-specific pricing practices; cost and demand shocks; and successive generations of emissions technology. The evidence base included thousands of spreadsheets, hundreds of thousands of trucks, more than 20,000 internal documents, more than 20,000 documents from the European Commission file, witness evidence, and detailed pricing statements. 

NERA assembled and reconciled large datasets, developed manufacturer-specific econometric models, tested alternative specifications and identifying assumptions, and subjected the results to extensive robustness analysis. The objective was to estimate the prices that would have prevailed absent the cartel and to disentangle any cartel-related effect from the many other factors influencing truck prices.

At the same time, Mr. Sullivan assessed the volume and value of all trucks purchased by the group of Scottish claimants, represented by Anderson Strathern. His work focused on forensically validating and reconciling transaction records across claimant and defendant datasets, addressing gaps and inconsistencies, and presenting a clear, evidence-based expert report on the Value of Commerce at the heart of the Scottish claimants’ case. 

Data treatments, specification choices, economic interpretations, and assumptions were examined through disclosure, information requests, case management conferences, issue hearings, expert reports, and expert meetings. The overcharge analysis also had to connect coherently with separate Value of Commerce and pass-on workstreams covering different businesses, purchasing arrangements, industries, and positions in the supply chain. 

NERA supported the claimants throughout the process, submitting expert reports and testifying in court. Across the different claimant groups, NERA worked alongside teams from Mishcon de Reya, Fieldfisher, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP), Hausfeld, Arnold & Porter, Edwin Coe, Walker Morris, Comerton & Hill, Stewarts, and Anderson Strathern. 

The Second Wave proceedings settled before the trial, which was scheduled to begin in September 2026.

Mr. Saggers served as Joint Expert on Overcharge. Mr. Sullivan undertook a separate expert role on Value of Commerce for the Scottish Pursuers. 

Consultant Ming Hon Wong coordinated the multi-OEM disclosure and analytical workstreams. Consultants James Thomas, Tanya Narang, Rafael Sambeat, and Hamza Shoaib led manufacturer-specific econometric workstreams, with specialist econometric input from Directors Cristián Hernández and Gabriella Monahova. The wider team included Economic Analysts Alisa Smaghina and Vivek Madlani and Senior Analysts Margot Cintract and Daisy Chu.