News

Skils successfully defended another client in the vertical pricing case brought by the Office for the Protection of Competition

On 12 March 2025, the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the cassation complaint of the Office for the Protection of Competition (the Office) against the judgment of the Regional Court in Brno, which annulled the earlier decision of the Chairman of the Office to impose a fine of CZK 95,461,000 on GARLAND distributor for the so-called vertical price fixing (RPM). We have previously reported on the judgment of the Regional Court in Brno.

The Supreme Administrative Court commented on the obligation of the Office to identify in the verdict of the decision each individual price agreements with individual customers that are supposed to constitute RPM agreements. The Supreme Administrative Court fully upheld the Regional Court’s assessment and emphasized that such a standard is common in criminal law cases and there is no reason why it should not also be applied in the administrative penal decision-making of the Office. It emphasised that the identification of individual agreements with individual customers in the verdict of the decision is also necessary in order to assess whether each individual agreement fulfils the definition of the offence in question, i.e. whether the aspect of the so-called concurrence of wills as the basic feature of the existence of the agreement is properly documented.

This judgment is another major success of our law firm in the so-called RPM cases and follows the victory in the BABY DIREKT case, which we have reported on previously.