In In re: Sulfuric Acid Antitrust Litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dismissed an antitrust class action filed by sulfuric acid purchasers, accusing U.S. and Canadian sulfuric acid mining companies of price-fixing by entering into deals where the U.S. companies agreed to distribute Canadian sulfuric acid and shut down or curtail their own production of sulfuric acid. In their suit, plaintiffs claimed that these shut down agreements represented price-fixing and a per se violation of antitrust laws. The Seventh Circuit disagreed, and held that the rule-of-reason test that requires plaintiffs to demonstrate that an agreement’s potential harms to competition outweigh any competitive benefits was the appropriate standard. The court further held that the shut down agreements could have plausibly been viewed as a way for the Canadian companies to minimize the risk of entering the U.S. market. According to the court, without the shut down agreements, Canadian companies might not have entered into the market, so the plaintiffs’ claim that the price would have been lower without the agreements is doubtful.
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