Major HVAC manufacturers on Friday asked a federal judge to dismiss a class-action lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to fix prices and overcharge for equipment since 2020.

What’s happening: In a joint motion filed Oct. 9, seven OEMs — Bosch, Carrier, Daikin, Lennox, Rheem, Trane, and AAON — and their subsidiaries asked a judge to dismiss consolidated antitrust complaints filed against them earlier this year.

Catch up quick: Plaintiffs allege that beginning in January 2020, the manufacturers have engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy that has resulted in a roughly eight percent overcharge compared with what prices would have been absent collusion, as Homepros reported in March.

Plaintiffs accuse the manufacturers of sharing non-public competitive data amongst themselves and coordinating price increases — and argue that the OEMs have had opportunities to collude via their involvement with AHRI and HARDI.
Statements that company executives made about “price discipline” during earnings calls over the past several years amounted to signaling, as did having their price increases nearly exclusively reported by ACHR News, the lawsuits allege.
Go deeper: In Friday’s motion, the defendants said the plaintiffs are trying to “contrive a conspiracy from nothing more than ordinary business dealings.”

For the lawsuit to proceed, the plaintiffs need to provide either direct evidence of an agreement to fix prices or circumstantial evidence that plausibly suggests such an agreement, the motion argues. “Plaintiffs do not come close,” it says.
The defendants contend they each raised prices independently due to supply-chain challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the A2L transition, and tariffs.
Of note: Antitrust law distinguishes between “conscious parallelism” — when competitors independently match each other’s pricing, which is legal — and illegal price-fixing, which requires advance agreement among competitors.

A 2022 analysis of antitrust class-action cases found that when parties file a motion to dismiss, courts grant it roughly 50 percent of the time.
Yes, and: In a separate legal filing on Friday, Mitsubishi Electric Trane argued that it doesn’t belong among the defendants because it manufactures mini-splits, which are sold through different distribution channels and at different price points than the ducted HVAC equipment at issue in the consolidated case.

AAON likewise filed its own motion to dismiss because it makes custom commercial equipment. “A manufacturer that builds each product to a customer’s unique specifications, negotiates pricing project-by-project, and lacks standardized list prices, cannot plausibly participate in a commodity-market price-signaling conspiracy,” its filing says.
What we’re watching: It remains unclear when a ruling on the motions will be made.

Source https://homepros.news/hvac-manufacturers-ask-judge-to-toss-price-fixing-lawsuit/