More than eight years ago, Michael Nemelka of Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick got a call from an automotive software company alleging industry tech giant CDK Global conspired with its main rival, The Reynolds and Reynolds Company, to eliminate competition from independent data integrators. This week, on the eve of trial, Nemelka and partners Derek Ho and Dan Dorris helped a class of vendors reach a $630 million antitrust settlement with CDK over claims the company conspired to limit access to dealership management systems. That number, reached after Kellogg Hansen launched an investigation of the industry that had no government parallel, was more than $140 more than the alleged overcharges by both CDK and Reynolds. The proposed settlement is subject to approval by U.S. District Chief Judge James Peterson in Madison, Wisconsin, who has been overseeing the litigation.

Litigation Daily: Who were your clients and what was at stake here?

Mike Nemelka: Our clients are software companies that provide services— things like inventory management, customer relationship management and registration and titling—to automotive dealerships across the United States. These companies need access to the dealer’s data to perform their services, but CDK (the defendant in this case) and its co-conspirator Reynolds ran the databases where the dealers stored their data. CDK and Reynolds worked together to seize control of the data and eliminate the competition that provided access to it. As a result, they could charge highly inflated prices to our clients for access to that data. For example, where competitors would charge $50 a month per dealership for that access, our clients were forced to pay CDK and Reynolds many times more than that, over $1,000 a month in some cases. Multiply that across thousands of car dealerships, and the stakes were huge.