Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate (MDI) and Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI) Price-Fixing Canadian Class Action

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Are you a company that manufactures polyurethane products, such as rigid and flexible foams, coatings, adhesives, sealants, elastomers, spandex, and cushioning?

Examples are: polyurethane foam, home and refrigerator insulation, paints, primers, glues, weather resistant materials, bedding and furniture, carpet underlay, wood doors, packaging applications, agricultural products, etc.

Do you buy Methylene diphenyl diisocyanates (MDIs) or Toluene Diisocyanate (TDIs) directly from any of these suppliers: Bayer, Covestro, BASF, Dow Chemical Company, Huntsman International, Wanhua Chemical Group, Mitsui Chemicals, and MCNS Polyurethanes?

If so, be aware that your company has been paying inflated prices to buy these chemicals since at least 2015, due to your supplier(s) price-fixing with its competitors. We want to help you get your money back and make sure that you pay fair prices in the future for MDIs and TDIs.

A class action is already underway in the United States.

Our firm would like to represent Canadian companies.

On June 11, 2018, it was revealed that the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) had caused a federal grand jury to issue subpoenas to manufacturers of MDI products in connection with a criminal investigation of price-fixing of MDI products.

This is not the first time MDI and TDI product producers have raised antitrust concerns. Indeed, most of the same Defendants were involved in prior criminal and civil antitrust cases concerning a conspiracy to fix, among other things, MDI and TDI prices.

In the prior civil antitrust case, Dow was subjected to a $1.06 billion judgment after a jury found it guilty of antitrust violations, and Huntsman, BASF and Bayer Corporation (the predecessor of Covestro), among others, paid $140 million in class-action settlements. Those entities also paid more than $460 million in additional individual non-class settlements for the same 1999-2004 conspiracy period.

Before the conspiracy, prices actually declined due to lower costs of raw materials, such as benzene and oil. In order to stop the declining profit rates and increase their margins, the Defendants conspired to fix, raise, stabilize and maintain MDI and TDI prices by: (a) engaging in a series of lockstep price increases for these products and (b) engaging in coordinated restrictions on the production of these products to facilitate the coordinated and repeated price increases for these products.

One novel feature of the present conspiracy is the Defendants’ repeated invocation of production-plant force majeures or production limitations to curtail production of MDI and TDI products for various periods, thereby ensuring that customers paid collusively-set supracompetitive prices.

The lawsuit investigation is being pursued on behalf of all persons who have purchased MDI and/or TDI products in Canada from the Defendants.

If you or someone you know has purchased MDI and/or TDI products, and you wish more information on potential compensation or to be kept advised of the status of the MDI and/or TDI Product Price-Fixing Class Action or any resulting compensation thereof in Canada, Ontario or Quebec, please provide your contact information to our law firm using the form below.

IF YOU WISH TO JOIN THE CLASS ACTION OR TO SIMPLY GET MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE COMPLETE THE FORM BELOW. Please note that providing your information creates no financial obligation for you. You are not charged any fee or cost for joining this class action. Our law firm is paid a contingency fee from the compensation recovered, only if the class action is successful. All information contained in this transmission is confidential and Consumer Law Group agrees to protect this information against unauthorized use, publication or disclosure.