A nationwide cartel may have conspired to illegally raise equipment rental prices paid by construction companies.
Keller Rohrback is investigating claims that a group of the largest construction rental companies in the country including United Rentals, Sunbelt Rentals, Sunstate Equipment, Herc Rentals, Herc Holdings, and H&E Equipment Services, united as a cartel known as Rouse Services LLC, or the “Rouse Cartel,” may have coordinated setting artificially high rental rates in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The equipment at issue, which includes heavy-duty bulldozers, lifts, excavators, front-end loaders and the like, is typically rented rather than purchased and maintained by smaller construction companies for whom such expense would be inefficient and unsustainable. But the alleged price-fixing undercuts the advantage of renting and eliminates the competition that healthy markets depend on. Did you overpay? We want to hear from you.
The cartel was allegedly formed in 2011: Rouse Services would pool competitively sensitive information (CSI) from each company in the cartel arrangement and calculate what is termed a Rouse Rental Insights (RRI) price for each piece of equipment. The allegations include that cartel member companies were strongly encouraged to set prices at or above the RRI, and this has resulted in steady, upward pressure on rental pricing across a broad spectrum of the industry.
If your construction company rented heavy equipment for use in residential or commercial building projects from one of more than 40 alleged cartel companies, we’d like to hear from you. Please contact us at 800-766-6044, or [email protected] for a free, no-obligation consultation to learn more about your legal rights. You may also use the secure form on this page.
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Keller Rohrback’s Complex Litigation Group has a national reputation as the go-to plaintiffs’ firm for large-scale, complex cases. We represent public and private investors, businesses, governments and individuals in a wide range of actions, including antitrust, securities fraud, fiduciary breach, insurance coverage, whistleblower, environmental and product liability cases. With offices in Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Santa Barbara, Phoenix, Denver, Missoula, and New York, our Complex Litigation Group is proud to offer its extensive experience to clients nationwide. Our trial lawyers serve as lead and co-lead counsel in class action cases throughout the country and have obtained judgments and settlements on behalf of clients in excess of $96 billion.
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