June 18, 2026, 12:51 GMT | Insight
German courts can be expected to push back at more competition damages claims in the future if they overload the proceedings with documents and data, a senior judge has said. Ulrich Egger was commenting on a May ruling by Germany’s Federal Court, which upheld the principle of claims being assigned to litigation vehicles.
German courts can be expected to push back at more competition damages claims in the future if they overload the proceedings with documents and data, according to a national judge.
Ulrich Egger was commenting on a May ruling by Germany’s Federal Court that upheld the principle of claims being assigned to litigation vehicles, but said parties had a duty to ensure lawsuits remained manageable.*
“The Federal Court is strengthening the principles of effectiveness to allow judges to do much more case management that they did in the past,” said Egger, presiding judge at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court.
He said at a conference** that German courts can give detailed procedural instructions and split proceedings into separate claims.
“Parties must not dump unstructured data and large unstructured volumes of documents and statements at the court’s door,” he said. “If they do so nevertheless, the court may dismiss the claim, and I am sure that German courts will make use of this possibility.”
Mieke Dudok van Heel, Senior Judge, District Court of Amsterdam, said Dutch courts were seeing too many cases with a tenuous connection to The Netherlands.
She referred to two cases referred by Dutch courts to the EU Court of Justice; one relating to beer, the other to
Apple’s app stores.***
“When these cases come to us, the Dutch courts also ask themselves ‘why me?’,” she said. “Because a lot of these cases have originally nothing to do with The Netherlands. That's why we then refer them to the European Court to ask if it's really the idea that we should hear those cases.”
* Case No. KZR 6/24 Sammelklage-Inkasso
** European Competition Forum Midsummer Meeting, Brussels, June 16-18, 2026
*** Case C-393/23 Athenian Brewery and Heineken and Case C-34/24 Stichting Right to Consumer Justice
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