Late this month, a middle-aged furniture salesman from Munich named Marc Geltl will make German legal history in a case that lawyers and companies around Europe are watching closely. As his lawyers enter a courtroom in Stuttgart on Dec. 20 to argue their case against the auto giant DaimlerChrysler, Geltl won't be alone. For the first time, the court's decision will apply to a group of about 100 disgruntled shareholders who are demanding compensation en masse.
Geltl, and a number of other investors, sold their Daimler stock before it zoomed upward in July 2005 on news of the resignation of the chief executive, Jürgen Schrempp. Though small - the investors are demanding compensation totaling €5 million, or $6.6 million - the case is the first collective shareholder lawsuit to be heard in Germany, which recently made the legal environment easier for plaintiffs to bring the types of shareholder suits that have been a feature of the U.S. legal landscape for years.
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