Dutch Court Rules On Refusal To Appoint Repairers To A Motor Vehicle Distribution Network

On 25 July 2012, the Court of First Instance of Amsterdam (the “Court”) rejected a claim brought by three former repairers of KIA Nederland BV (“KIA Nederland”), ruling that the distribution system in question did not infringe the competition rules.

The repairers had previously brought interim proceedings before the President of the Court claiming that KIA Motors Nederland BV (“KIA Motors”), which replaced KIA Nederland as the importer of the KIA brand in the Netherlands after the former was declared bankrupt, had unlawfully refused to reappoint them as authorised repairers within KIA Motors’ selective distribution network. In an interim judgment of 3 December 2009, the President of the Court accepted the repairers’ arguments and ordered KIA Motors to reappoint them as repairers on a temporary basis until the judgment on the merits (see VBB on Competition Law, Volume 2010, No. 3, available at www.vbb.com).