Three motorists plan to sue the Shanghai local government after a monthly auction of car license plates was cancelled at the last minute.

According to Shanghai Huangpu District People's Court, three individuals filed a lawsuit yesterday afternoon, suing the local transport department and the auction company, demanding them to call the auction valid. Another has called the court to inquire.

If they win the suit and the auction is deemed valid, they would be able to buy a car license plate for as low as 100 yuan ($14.60), much lower than the average of 30,000 yuan.

A woman who works with the case filing division of the court said that the court is checking the documents but has not accepted them yet. According to Chinese law, a court decides to accept or reject a case within seven days.

Since 1994, the Shanghai government has issued car licenses through auction, in which bidders offer a price at a certain time via phone or Internet. Whoever bids first and offers a price above the threshold price, which fluctuates every time due to demand, will get a plate.

The price of the license plate, which is called the single most expensive piece of iron in China, has soared to more than 60,000 yuan. Its recent average price is about 30,000 yuan.

On Saturday, however, the lowest price seen at the auction was 100 yuan with 8,834 bidders for 8,000 plates.

At 11:10 am, all the bidders were told that the auction was cancelled because of network problems.

This was the first time in 18 years that the auction has been cancelled.

Later that day, the news office of the local government announced that network traffic at 10:55 am was 10 times more than usual, which paralyzed the system.

However, according to Xinmin.com, the network company that maintains the auction company system, the network was working well during the bidding.

A woman with the Shanghai International Commodity Auction Co Ltd told China Daily that police are investigating the situation.

Computer hackers may have caused the network problem, she said.

(China Daily July 21, 2009)