Antitrust and Consumer Protection
Competition: Fall 2014, Vol. 23, No. 2
Content
- "All Natural" Class Actions: a Plaintiff Perspective
- Appellate Courts Grapple With the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act—Plaintiffs' 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
- 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
- Plaintiff Perspective: the Long Arm of State Antitrust Law
PLAINTIFF PERSPECTIVE: THE LONG ARM OF STATE ANTITRUST LAW
By Marc A. Pilotin1
I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
As manufacturing of consumer products and their component parts continues to move offshore,2 consumers face a greater risk of suffering injuries resulting from anticompetitive conduct occurring outside of the United States.3 The antitrust docket in the Northern District of California speaks to this point. From TFT-LCD panels to memory chips to optical disk drives to lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, the District has seen numerous consumer lawsuits for damages arising from alleged price-fixing of consumer-product components.4 Each of these cases has involved international cartels.
To recover damages against such cartels, however, aggrieved consumers who purchased products containing price-fixed components (i.e., finished products) generally must turn to state antitrust statutes because of the bar on indirect purchaser recovery under the Sherman Act.5 Many state antitrust regimes permit indirect purchasers to sue for damages resulting from anticompetitive conduct.6 And the fact that state antitrust laws provide relief where its federal counterpart does not is acceptable. As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized, the federal antitrust regime was intended "to supplement, not displace, state antitrust remedies."7