Sued

Unipetrol, Bayer, Shell units are sued over rubber cartel claim

Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. and 25 other companies sued Unipetrol AS, units of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Bayer AG, and as many as 20 others over an alleged European rubber cartel.

The companies, which manufacture tires and rubber products, are seeking damages for losses they claim resulted from a rubber cartel operating from about 1996 to 2002, Unipetrol said in a statement yesterday. The suit was filed at the High Court in London.

“They didn't specify the damages,” Blanka Ruzickova, a Prague-based spokeswoman for Unipetrol, said in an interview today. Unipetrol has 28 days to respond to a request to have the case heard in London, she said.

Unipetrol and four other companies were fined a total of 519 million euros ($812 million) in a 2006 European Union antitrust case involving ingredients in rubber used in tires and shoes. All five companies are appealing the decision.

Bayer AG spokesman Markus Loeber in Leverkusen, Germany, said the company was named as a defendant and declined to comment further. Bayer agreed in 2004 to pay $66 million to settle a U.S. criminal charge it participated in a global conspiracy to fix prices of chemicals used to make rubber. The company had immunity from fines in the EU case.

Stuart Bruseth, Shell's London-based head of global media relations, and spokesman Rainer Winzenried in the Netherlands didn't respond to messages left today.

Jim Combs, a lawyer for Melksham, England-based Cooper Tire, didn't return a phone message.

(Published by Bloomberg 20, 2008)