MDL No. 3152 is active in the Northern District of Illinois. The RealPage DOJ settlement is on the docket. The Sunbelt refueling and transportation surcharge class action settled for $10 million. The billing patterns that generate class action exposure are detectable in invoice data before a complaint is filed. The Ledger runs that analysis from the inside — for you, before anyone else runs it from the outside.
Three separate litigation tracks — antitrust, consumer protection, and DOJ enforcement — are working through the federal courts simultaneously. Each one runs on invoice data. Each one produces findings that are structurally identical to what an internal billing audit would surface.
| Case / Docket | Defendants | Theory | Status & Exposure |
|---|---|---|---|
|
MDL No. 3152 N.D. Ill. · Judge Sara L. Ellis Active — Consolidated Aug 13, 2025 |
United Rentals, Inc. · Sunbelt Rentals, Inc. · Herc Holdings Inc. / Herc Rentals Inc. · H&E Equipment Services, Inc. · Sunstate Equipment Co., LLC · The Home Depot, Inc. · EquipmentShare.com Inc. · RB Global, Inc. · Rouse Services LLC · Rouse Analytics LLC | Hub-and-spoke conspiracy under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Defendants pooled nonpublic pricing and utilization data through Rouse Services, which produced the "Rouse Rental Insights" benchmark — a members-only real-time pricing tool used to align rates across competitors and suppress independent pricing decisions. Plaintiffs: small businesses including AXG Roofing LLC, Immediate Appliance Service Inc., Mack's Junk Removal, Haxton Masonry, John Signs, and a nationwide class of equipment renters dating from March 31, 2021. | Consolidated from eight actions in three districts. At least 10 antitrust class actions total. Seeks injunctive relief and treble damages under antitrust law. Defense firms include Vinson & Elkins, Sullivan & Cromwell, and Kirkland & Ellis. Rouse Services acquired by RB Global (formerly Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers) in 2020. |
|
Sunbelt Refueling / Transportation Settlement Multi-district · Five consolidated actions Settled — $10M Fund |
Sunbelt Rentals, Inc. | Breach of contract and state consumer protection statutes. Plaintiffs alleged Sunbelt charged Pay On Return refueling fees in excess of actual refueling costs, and assessed a "transportation surcharge" beyond the delivery and pickup costs the rental contract allowed. Georgia federal court records: 14,000+ customers paid $5.8M in refueling charges; 21,000+ customers paid $21M+ in transportation fees in one state alone during the class period. | $10 million settlement fund. Class period: contracts dated December 29, 2013 through November 10, 2015 (US); earlier periods for Arizona, California, Nevada, and Florida. Settlement in force. Sunbelt denied wrongdoing. Sunbelt's current transportation surcharge disclosure states the fee "is not specifically designed to recover an exact percentage of the costs attributable to any particular transaction." |
|
United States v. RealPage, Inc. No. 1:24-CV-00710-WLO-JLW · M.D.N.C. DOJ Settlement — Filed Nov 24, 2025 |
RealPage Inc. · Greystar Real Estate Partners · LivCor · Camden Property Trust · Cushman & Wakefield · Pinnacle Property Management Services · Willow Bridge Property Co. · Cortland Management | DOJ Antitrust Division, joined by 10 state AGs. RealPage's YieldStar software used nonpublic, competitively sensitive information from competing landlords to generate daily rental pricing recommendations. Landlords accepted recommendations 80–90% of the time, eliminating independent pricing decisions. Violations alleged under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Greystar settled: $50M class action (Oct 2025) + $7M state-level claims (Nov 2025). Cortland settled separately. | Proposed consent judgment filed Nov 24, 2025. RealPage: no fines, no admission of wrongdoing. Required: cease use of competitors' current nonpublic data; retrain models on data at least 12 months old; appoint antitrust compliance officer; annual training; periodic audits of feature compliance and data sourcing; annual certifications from GC and compliance officer; three-year court-appointed monitor; cooperate with DOJ prosecution of landlord co-defendants. State AGs in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington did not sign the federal settlement and may pursue independent enforcement. |
|
Home Depot Tool Rental — Damage Protection E&G Enterprise, Inc. v. Home Depot USA · 1:24-cv-03020 N.D. Ga. Active — Early Stage 2026 |
The Home Depot, Inc. | Breach of rental contract. Home Depot changed its Damage Protection policy to apply the surcharge only to the rental price, not to additional rental fees. Plaintiffs allege Home Depot continues to charge the 15% Damage Protection surcharge on both the base rental price and additional fees, violating its own amended contract. | Simmons v. Home Depot (1:25-cv-02409) dismissed Jan 9, 2026 — court found the contract language bound the plaintiff despite the online declination, noting the practice "may be sneaky." E&G Enterprise action remains at early procedural stage. No nationwide settlement or class certification as of August 2026. Home Depot also named in MDL No. 3152 Rouse antitrust litigation. |
|
Sunbelt — Illinois Consumer Fraud Quality Assured Industrial Coatings LLC · Madison County Circuit Court, Dec 2024 Active |
Sunbelt Rentals Inc. | Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act. Plaintiff alleges Sunbelt charged more for refueling than its actual costs and failed to adjust refueling charges to reflect changes in the retail price of fuel. | Filed December 2024. Seeks full restitution of refueling charges, injunctive relief, damages, and litigation costs. The theory is structurally identical to the settled 2017 class action — same surcharge, same contract language, new plaintiff and jurisdiction. |
The enforcement template from the RealPage case maps directly onto the construction equipment rental antitrust litigation. The DOJ's consent judgment against RealPage describes precisely what compliance looks like — and precisely what non-compliance looks like.
The Capitol Forum analysis of Rouse Services, published April 11, 2025: Rouse's business model resembles those of benchmarking firms that have faced lawsuits and probes from the DOJ. A former equipment rental CEO interviewed by British researchers described how Rouse helped the industry avoid a "race to the bottom" during the pandemic — rental companies were willing to accept lower time utilization rather than reduce dollar utilization, keeping rates elevated even when equipment sat unused. "I know that they use Rouse as a factor in making decisions in markets where they're struggling," he said. That statement is now in the litigation record.
Every active complaint in the equipment rental antitrust litigation was built from invoice data, contract language, and pricing records. The patterns that generate exposure are not hidden — they are structural features of how the billing system works. The MDL No. 3152 complaints draw on economic literature and DOJ and FTC statements warning that shared algorithms can create "techno-cartels" and hub-and-spoke conspiracies even without direct human intervention.
The Ledger reads invoice and contract data. On the contractor side, we find what you've been overcharged. On the supplier side, we find what your billing system would produce if a plaintiffs' attorney ran the same analysis — before they do.
Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater, DOJ Antitrust Division: "Competing companies must make independent pricing decisions, and with the rise of algorithmic and artificial intelligence tools, we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement." The consent judgment is the clearest statement DOJ has issued about where the line falls. Every item below is a mandatory obligation RealPage accepted.
The state AGs did not sign the federal consent judgment. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington joined the DOJ's complaint. Those state enforcers may continue to litigate if they view the federal relief as insufficient, and private actions involving RealPage and other revenue management tools remain active in multiple circuits. The federal settlement does not extinguish state exposure. A compliant pricing operation in 2026 requires documentation that survives scrutiny from both federal and state enforcement simultaneously.
Every finding is traced to its source document. Every comparison is made against the contract language or the published fee schedule that governs the billing period. The findings report goes to you and stays with you.
The Ledger serves contractors and property managers on a monthly monitoring basis. Supplier engagements are scoped professionally — defined scope, defined deliverable, findings stay with the client. The two client pools are structurally separated.
Monthly service. Flat rate. Cancel anytime. No contract required to start.