District of Washington Judge Lonny Suko refused to dismiss a conspiracy claim brought by ARC against AMH. ARC alleges that AMH made false statements about ARC, emailing more than dozen of its customers and falsely telling reporting that ARC had gone out of business. The email also asked the customers to loan AMH one of ARC’s welders, and a few months later, AMH announced at […]
Category Archives: Vertical Restraints
Drug Pricing Class Action Certified
May 11, 2011 – 5:01 pm
A District of Massachusetts court certified a class of state and city plaintiffs bringing a class complaint alleging that McKesson Corp., a large drug distributer, organized a scheme to increase the posted average wholesale prices for drugs, which is used to calculate payments to pharmacies. The 2008 complaint alleges that the scheme affected prices from […]
US Supreme Court Declines to Review Dismissal of Leegin Price Fixing Case
February 19, 2011 – 12:39 pm
Update February 2011: The U.S. Supreme Court denied the plaintiff’s petition for certioari without comment. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of an amended complaint that sought to cast what were originally vertical price fixing allegations has horizontal price fixing. The case brought by a discount retailer originally alleged that Leegin imposed vertical minimum resell […]
Vertical Price Fixing Dismissal Upheld on Appeal
January 17, 2011 – 12:14 am
The 11th Circuit upheld the dismissal of a proposed class-action against Tempur-Pedic North America Inc., ruling that the allegations did not meet the Twombly plausibility standard. The court held that the plaintiffs failed to (1) plead a relevant market; (2) sufficiently allege that unreasonable restraint of trade was created by Tempur-Pedic’s vertical resale price maintenance agreement; […]
Antitrust Division Sues Credit Card Companies
October 12, 2010 – 1:40 pm
The United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, along with several states’ attorneys general have sued Visa, MasterCard, and American Express alleging that the card systems’ rules prohibiting merchants from offering discounts to consumers who use a particular card brand constitute unreasonable vertical agreements in restraint of trade. The Division simultaneously filed a proposed consent […]
Racetrack Simulcast Boycott Case Survives Motion to Dismiss
August 31, 2010 – 10:53 am
Update August 2010: The court granted summary judgment for the racetrack and broadcaster defendants on the ground that they could not question the no broadcast order. The case is still proceeding against the other defendants. District of Maryland Judge Richard Bennett denied the defendants motion to dismiss in a case filed by a racetrack and […]
Jury Rules for Mack Truck in Dealer Conspiracy Case
June 16, 2010 – 2:22 pm
Update June 2010: The Third Circuit rejected the dealer’s appeal on grounds that the court admitted irrelevant prejudicial evidence. In an Eastern District of Pennsylvania case, a Mack Truck dealer alleged that Mack oversaw a conspiracy among its dealers to maintain truck prices and to discipline any dealer that, like plaintiff Toledo Mack, sought to […]
Resale Price Maintenance Law in Flux
May 27, 2010 – 9:16 am
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision three years ago to eliminate the per serule against resale price maintenance, the state of the law remains in flux primarily because some state antitrust enforcers continue to aggressively pursue RPM arrangements under state law. Recent examples include New York’s prosecution of Tempur-Pedic International and California’s case against DermaQuest Inc. […]
Redbox Vertical Boycott Allegations Against Universal to Proceed
August 20, 2009 – 4:11 pm
In Redbox Automated Retail LLC v. Universal Studios Home Entertainment LLC et al., Delaware District Court Judge Robert B. Kugler allowed Redbox Automated Retail LLC to proceed with its antitrust allegations against Universal Studios Home Entertainment LLC, while dismissing Redbox’s misuse of copyright and interference with contract allegations. Judge Kugler found that Redbox had sufficiently […]
Fourth Circuit Affirms that Maryland Liquor Regulation is Anticompetitive
August 20, 2009 – 4:07 pm
In TFWS Inc. v. Peter Franchot et al., 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reverse its earlier decision that Maryland’s liquor and wine regulations involving 1) post-and-hold pricing system, which governs how and when liquor wholesalers may charge their prices; and 2) a volume discount ban, which prevents wholesalers from offering lower prices to […]