Strained relations

A Stamford-based gas station trade group has joined antitrust litigation against makers of vehicle filters, claiming the industry is fixing prices to inflate profits.

The Gasoline & Automotive Service Dealers of America Inc. (GASDA) is seeking class-action status for its suit. GASDA does not specify an amount it is seeking in damages, but claims prices may have been artificially inflated between 4 percent and 6 percent.

The suit covers filters for vehicle engine oil, fuel lines, air conduits and transmissions, of which more than $3 billion are sold in the United States annually.

The GASDA suit was only the latest in a string of such lawsuits launched by various automotive companies against one or more of the defendants. Initial defendants named in the GASDA suit include the Danbury-based consumer products group of Honeywell International, which sells the FRAM brand of filters. Other defendants include:

Ӣ ArvinMeritor Inc. of Troy, Mich.;

Ӣ Baldwin Filters Inc. of Kearney, Neb.;

Ӣ Bosch USA of Broadview, Ill.;

Ӣ Champion Laboratories Inc. of Albion, Ill.;

Ӣ Cummins Filtration Inc. of Nashville, Tenn.;

Ӣ Donaldson Co. of Minneapolis;

Ӣ Mann + Hummel USA of Portage, Mich.;

Ӣ Purolator Filters N.A. L.L.C. of Fayetteville, N.C.;

Ӣ United Components Inc. of Evansville, Ind.; and

Ӣ Wix Filtration Group L.L.C. of Gastonia, N.C.

According to GASDA, the companies belong to a trade group called the Filter Manufacturers Council, a Research Triangle Park, N.C., organization that is not named as a defendant.

GASDA claims the companies conspired to fix prices through face-to-face meetings at trade shows and through confidential e-mails. The group cites an alleged June 1999 fax from a Purolator manager to a counterpart at Honeywell, detailing a planned 6 percent hike in filter prices that was not revealed to customers until two weeks later.

In a purported 2004 email, GASDA claims Champion Labs indicated other defendants were “on board” with a coordinated increase in prices.

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“Absent their coordinated activity, (the) defendants would have been forced to price filters competitively or risk losing the significant business of their filter customers,” GASDA alleged in the lawsuit. “The likelihood that (the) defendants would have moderated their price increases or ”¦ decreased their prices is particularly strong in the face of Champion”™s developments in filter technology, which have reduced the amount of steel used in its filters.”

At deadline, the filter makers had yet to respond in court to the GASDA allegations or those in other cases in Connecticut and elsewhere.

Pricing cases are notoriously difficult to prove, but a handful of New England dealers are fresh off an appeals court victory upholding a 2004 Massachusetts verdict that Shell Oil Co. and Motiva Enterprises intentionally overcharged eight franchisees on gasoline and rent, forcing several to go out of business. More than 50 more New England dealers are awaiting court action on their own claims against the companies, none of them based in Connecticut.

Motiva indicated in late April it was considering whether to seek a review of the appeals court verdict.