A District of Massachusetts judge has certified two multi-jurisdictional classes, one of third-party payors and another for consumers paying for physician administered drugs, alleging that AstraZeneca and Bristol-Meyers inflated wholesale drug prices. Judge Patti Saris rejected the defendants’ objection that the 39 differing state laws at issue would render class action treatment unmanageable.
EC Fines Paraffin Wax Producers
October 2, 2008 – 11:07 am
Nine paraffin wax producers found to have engaged in a price fixing cartel were fined more than 675 million euros, the fourth largest cartel fine in the Commission’s history. The defendants were Exxon, ENI, Hansen & Rosenthal, MOL, Repsol, RWE, Sosol, Tudapetrol, and Total.
Credit Card Merchant Case Against AmEx Separately Consolidated
September 25, 2008 – 11:56 am
Update: American Express has acknowledged that the Antitrust Division is investigating its ant-steering rules, which prohibit merchants from steering customers to other means of payment or charging more to use an AmEx card that is charged to use other cards.
American Express was originally a defendant in the nationwide merchant class action challenging credit card merchant rules. That case, however, has focused on the lack of competition among Visa and MasterCard issuers on interchange fees, and AmEx was thus dropped from the amended complaint. Last June, a group of drug stores filed separate complaints against AmEx relating to rules prohibiting merchants accepting AmEx cards from steering their customers to less expensive means of payment. The plaintiffs argued that the issues were sufficiently related to the larger case to support consolidation. Although the class action includes similar claims against MasterCard and Visa issuers, the judge handling the larger class action found insufficient similarity in the claims. The cases against AmEx have thus been separately consolidated.
Potash Suppliers Sued for Fixing Prices
September 18, 2008 – 11:45 am
Minn-Chem Inc. has filed an antitrust suit in the District of Minnesota alleging that suppliers of the fertilizer potash, beginning in 2004, agreed to raise prices in a market of increasing supplies. The complaint alleges that potash suppliers improperly shared in formation on prices, capacity, volume, and demand as part of a coordinated program to allocate markets, customers and output.
Steel Producers Accused of Coordinating Production Cuts
September 18, 2008 – 11:23 am
Standard Iron Works has filed a complaint in the Northern District of Illinois alleging that major producers of raw steel coordinated an output reduction in 2005 in order to prop up prices during a period of low demand.
Cell Phone Companies Accused of Fixing the Price of Text Messaging
September 18, 2008 – 11:19 am
Putative class actions were recently filed in Illinois and Ohio federal courts alleging that the nation’s four leading cell phone companies, AT&T, SprintNextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon have agreed to fix the price of text messages. The suits followed on the heals of a letter from the chair of the Senate Sub-committee on Antitrust, Herb Kohl, to the heads of the four cell phone companies complaining that the cost of a text message had doubled in the past three years and that the increase could not be justified by increasing costs. Kohl claimed that the timing and amounts of the increases raised antitrust concern.
ECJ Takes Middle Ground on Drug Arbitrage
September 18, 2008 – 11:07 am
The European Court of Justice recently ruled that pharmaceutical companies operating in the European Union may limit, but not cut off altogether, supplies to wholesalers who seek to profit from purchasing drugs with low price caps and then exporting them to higher-priced markets.
E-bay Complains About Anticompetitive Distribution Restraints in Europe
September 18, 2008 – 11:04 am
E-bay has asked the European Competition Commission to investigate allegations that distribution agreements in various EU member countries are prohibiting on-line sales. The complaint identifies sporting goods in Spain, schoolbags in Germany, and pushchairs in England as three areas in which anticompetitive distribution agreements are being used. Neelie Kroes, EU Competition Commissioner, promised to investigate if E-bay comes forward with sufficiently detailed information.
Physical Therapy Monopolization Case Survives Motion to Dismiss
September 11, 2008 – 3:23 pm
In National Athletic Trainers Association v. American Physical Therapy Association, a group of athletic trainers allege that the APTA has employed a number of anticompetitive practices to exclude athletic trainers from the market for manual therapy. The allegedly exclusionary practices include (1)disparaging athletic trainors by telling the publice and students studying to be physical therapists that only the latter can provide certain types of therapy and (2) instructing physical therapists not to teach athletic trainers how to provide therapy and barring them from APTA conferences. The APTA sought to dismiss the case for failure to allege adequate product and geographic markets. The court held that the complaint sufficiently alleged a national manual therapy market for the purposing of surviving a motion to dismiss.
DOJ & FTC Squabble Over Section 2 Guidelines
September 10, 2008 – 10:46 am
After a series of joint meetings to help clarify enforcement standards for single firm conduct, the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, issued a report on its own. Three FTC Commissions almost immediately critisized the report as going to far in insulating single firm conduct from antitrust scrutiny. To read the report, click here.