A-G to High Court: Impose monopoly limits on foreign companies
If the Supreme Court follows Mandelblit’s view it will radically change the legal framework for such foreign companies.
By YONAH JEREMY BOBATTORNEY-GENERAL Avichai Mandelblit has been one of the main players, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, in the current political stalemate.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it should impose Israel’s monopoly laws on foreign companies that have a major impact on the local market.If the Supreme Court follows Mandelblit’s view – a view put forward by plaintiffs trying to sue various foreign car companies for violating Israel’s monopoly laws in a class action lawsuit before a district court – it will radically change the legal framework for such foreign companies.Until now, such foreign companies could potentially escape scrutiny for price-fixing or other schemes if they devised ways to penetrate Israeli markets without establishing themselves as a local Israeli company.However, Mandelblit’s theory was that in the age of globalization, the trend worldwide for when to apply monopoly laws is not to use a stale and obsolete test of whether a company is local, but rather to see whether a company, local or foreign, has substantial effects on the local market.This could open up a range of foreign companies to class action lawsuits which they were immune from until now and impact their strategies regarding Israeli markets.The attorney-general said that the district court was incorrect when it refused to accept evidence from 2016 from official European bodies regarding the car companies’ price-fixing cartel scheme.Further, he said the district court was mistaken to require the plaintiffs to show evidence that the foreign companies intended to have a specific impact on the Israeli market in order to compel the companies to reveal certain documents.Rather, he said that as long as the foreign companies’ actions had a substantial impact on the Israeli market, evidence of their intent was beside the point.Since the alleged price-fixing scheme led to raising the prices for their products in Israel, the attorney-general said that the district court should have compelled the foreign companies to produce the documents sought by the plaintiffs.Producing these documents is crucial to enabling the plaintiffs to have an opportunity to reveal the background to any conduct violating Israel’s monopoly laws and strengthening the trend of protecting the Israeli consumer.
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