Latest Suit to Allege Price-Fixing Seeks to Combine 4 Cases
At least 6 cases filed in federal court claim collusion by major manufacturers
COURT CHALLENGE: At least six lawsuits have been filed alleging that HVAC manufacturers have colluded to fix prices on equipment.
Several contractors are joining forces to challenge major HVAC manufacturers over what they say is a coordinated effort to keep equipment prices artificially high.
The latest lawsuit to claim collusion and price-fixing by manufacturers was filed May 11 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by Husky Heating & Cooling, a contractor in Conway, Arkansas. It’s at least the sixth such case filed in recent weeks.
There are more than 20 defendants, including Bosch, Trane Technologies, Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US, Carrier Global Corp., Daikin Comfort Technologies, Lennox International Inc., Aaon Inc., and Rheem Manufacturing Co. Some of the defendant companies are subsidiaries of parent companies also named in the suit.
The case includes a motion to consolidate it and three other similar cases, plus any “subsequently filed cases,” into one case on behalf of direct purchasers of HVAC equipment.
The Husky suit claims that since at least January of 2020, the defendants “conspired to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the prices of HVAC Equipment throughout the United States.” Prices increased by more than 50% during the period, the suit says, outpacing inflation and the rate at which the prices of comparable goods have increased.
The suit says the defendants justified the increases with “pretextual explanations,” including supply chain disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, changes to efficiency standards, and the phasedown of HFC refrigerants.
“None of these explanations justified the magnitude, timing, or coordinated nature of Defendants’ price increases,” the suit says.
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The suit also says the defendants used proprietary information from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) “to monitor market conditions, coordinate pricing strategies, and align production decisions,” and that they used pricing announcements in The ACHR News “to publicly announce price increases and signal future pricing and supply intentions to competitors and the broader market.” Related suits have made similar claims.
Neither AHRI nor The ACHR News are defendants in any of the suits.
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