Antitrust and Consumer Protection
Competition: Fall 2014, Vol. 23, No. 2
Content
- "All Natural" Class Actions: a Plaintiff Perspective
- Cafa: Recent Developments On the Jurisdictional and Settlement Fronts
- Chair's Column
- Defense Perspective: "All Natural" Class Actions
- Editor's Note
- Federal and State Class Antitrust Actions Should Not Be Tried In a Single Trial
- Ftc V. Wyndham Worldwide Corporation, Et Al. and the Ftc's Authority To Regulate Companies' Data Security Practices
- Joint Trial of Direct and Indirect Purchaser Claims
- Masthead
- Plaintiff Perspective: the Long Arm of State Antitrust Law
- Recoveries For Violations of Federal and California Antitrust Statutes Should Not Be Apportioned
- So Your Suppliers Conspired Against You: An Antitrust Class Action Opt-out Primer
- The Ftaia Limits the Extraterritorial Reach of State Antitrust Laws
- The Misapplication of Associated General Contractors To Cartwright Act Claims
- The Problem of Duplicative Recovery Under Federal and State Antitrust Law
- Why Associated General Contractors Should Be Used To Assess Standing In Cartwright Act Cases
- Appellate Courts Grapple With the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act—Plaintiffs' Perspective
APPELLATE COURTS GRAPPLE WITH THE FOREIGN TRADE ANTITRUST IMPROVEMENTS ACT—PLAINTIFFS’ PERSPECTIVE
By Craig C. Corbitt1 and Aaron M. Sheanin2
I. INTRODUCTION
Today’s consumer products — from cutting-edge electronic devices to automobiles, and the components in them — are manufactured largely outside the United States. "Nothing is more common nowadays than for products imported to the United States to include components that the producers had bought from foreign manufacturers."3 But the rise of these globalized supply chains comes with an unexpected cost for American consumers: "As a result, the prices of many products exported to the United States are elevated to some extent by price fixing or other anticompetitive acts that would be forbidden by the Sherman Act if committed in the United States."4
In industries as diverse as computer chips, display technologies (both flat-panel and tube varieties), and auto parts (from ball bearings to wire harnesses), long-running, foreign-based cartels have taken hold in recent years and reaped billions of dollars from American consumers who bought finished products containing price-fixed components.5 As these cartels have been uncovered, often as a result of a cartel member voluntarily confessing to the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under its leniency program, the consequences for foreign-based firms have been severe. The Antitrust Division has obtained, through plea agreements and convictions, record-breaking fines from foreign companies and has secured lengthy prison sentences for foreign nationals. In addition, civil plaintiffs (through class actions, "direct" actions by large intermediate purchasers, and state attorneys general acting pursuant to statutory and common law authority) have sued cartel members for the overcharges caused by the price-fixed component, and in many instances have obtained significant recoveries from the cartel participants.