Retailers Win $22.8 Million From Arco : Energy: They had charged that they were victims of price fixing after the first Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

More than 20,000 gasoline service station owners, truck-stop operators and farm-fuel and aviation-fuel suppliers from around the country won a $22.8-million judgment against Atlantic Richfield Co. in San Jose federal court Monday.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in 1979, contended that Arco overcharged retailers $94 million for gasoline and other petroleum products in the wake of dramatic price hikes brought on by the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

Under price controls in effect during the 1970s, an oil company could increase prices only by showing that associated costs had gone up since the base month of May, 1973.

“The jury found that Arco had increased its prices based on higher import fees and customs duties that Arco actually didn’t pay,” said Tracy R. Kirkham of Cooper & Kirkham in San Francisco, which filed the case in 1979 on behalf of Don Van Vranken, operator of a Fresno truck stop.

Arco will appeal the verdict.

“Unfortunately, pretrial orders precluded introduction of evidence” that would have shown that Arco did not overcharge, said Francis X. McCormack, Arco vice president and general counsel.

Dispute also continues over the final amount Arco might have to pay.

Because of a statement by the trial judge that the judgment would be calculated in 1992 dollars, Kirkham said, the final amount could be “somewhere in the range of $60 to $80 million.”

Spokesman Albert Greenstein said that Arco has already paid $27 million to the plaintiffs--in a parallel but larger action against the company by the U.S. Department of Energy, which Arco settled without admitting guilt--and that the higher figure is “outrageous.”

The plaintiffs say that only a small portion of the $27 million will be credited in the final judgment.

U.S. District Judge Spencer Williams, who heard the four-week trial, will decide the final amount at a hearing Sept. 21.