LendingTree Denied Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Suit

District of New Jersey Judge Susan D. Wigenton denied LendingTree’s motion to dismiss BanxCorp’s antitrust claims against it, finding that BanxCorp’s complaint contained sufficiently detailed factual allegations regarding a 2007 partnership between LendingTree and Bankrate Inc.  BanxCorp, a bank-rate website company, alleged that LendingTree conspired with Bankrate to fix prices and control the online bank-rate market.  Media defendants that displayed the bank-rate information, including Dow Jones & Co. Inc., the New York Times Co., CNBC Inc., Cable News Network Inc., MSNBC Interactive News LLC, Fox News Network LLC, AOL Inc., and Move Inc. were dismissed from the suit.  BanxCorp’s complaint did not meet the plausibility pleading standard by simply alleging that the media defendants acted as a cartel regarding horizontal market division.

This entry was posted on April 15, 2011 at 1:34 pm, filed under Cartel Activity, Standard for Alleging Conspiracy, US Federal Courts. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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