Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs filed suit against defendants, alleging that defendants violated federal and state antitrust laws by conspiring to fix the price for SD cards and engaging in improper practices with respect to the licensing of defendants' patents to other manufacturers of SD cards. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief under section 16 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. 26. The court distinguished this case from a recent decision in Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd v. Panasonic Corp. The court concluded that, because plaintiffs sought only injunctive relief under federal law, their federal antitrust claim was subject to the equitable doctrine of laches and not the four-year statute of limitations in section 4B of the Clayton Act. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to establish that laches was not a bar to plaintiffs' federal antitrust claim. The court also concluded that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiffs' state law claims. On remand, the district court should apply the California Supreme Court's recent decision in Aryeh v. Canon Business Solutions, Inc. in determining whether plaintiffs' Cartwright Act, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 16720, claim was timely filed. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded for further proceedings. View "Oliver v. SD-3C" on Justia Law

UNM, a trade show cleaning company, filed suit against SDC, alleging claims for interference with contract, interference with prospective economic advantage, and antitrust violations. The court reversed the district court's holding that under California law, SDC could not be held liable for the tort of intentional interference with contractual relationship; reversed the grant of judgment as a matter of law on that ground; affirmed the district court's holding that it committed instructional error by not interpreting the terms of the contract and that this error constituted prejudicial error that warranted a new trial; affirmed the district court's holding that SDC possessed state action immunity from UNM's antitrust claim; held that the a new trial is warranted on UNM's claim for intentional interference with contractual relationship; and concluded that, under California law, SDC could not be liable for punitive damages because it is a public entity. View "United Nat'l Maint. v. San Diego Convention Ctr." on Justia Law

Samsung filed suit alleging that defendant's SD card licenses were an anti-competitive agreement in restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1-7. At issue was the scope of the continuing violation exception to the four-year statute of limitations on private actions to enforce the antitrust laws. The court agreed with Samsung that defendants' committed two overt acts within the limitations period: the adoption of the 2006 license, which extended the license to cover the second-generation SD cards, and the attempt to enforce either license by collecting royalty payments from Samsung. The court held that, even if the 2006 license was merely a restatement of the 2003 license, the application of the licenses to Samsung when it began to make SD cards in the fall of 2006 was also an overt act that restarted the limitations period. Because the harm Samsung challenged in this suit was speculative at the time of the initial wrong, the law of limitations in federal antitrust actions allowed Samsung to file suit once the harm crystallized in 2006. Because the court concluded that the federal antitrust claims were timely, the court vacated the district court's dismissal of the state law claims and remanded. Construing the district court's order as an implicit dismissal of the equitable claim, the court vacated that dismissal and remanded for a determination of whether the equitable claim was timely. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings on the federal antitrust claims and on the supplemental state law claims. View "Samsung Electronics v. Panasonic Corp." on Justia Law

After the Department denied Memorial's application for a Certificate of Need to perform elective percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs), Memorial filed suit alleging that the PCI regulations were an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, and unreasonably discriminated against interstate commerce in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause and 42 U.S.C. 1983. The court concluded that the requirements did not violate the dormant Commerce Clause where the minimum procedure requirement did not burden interstate commerce and the minimum procedure requirement protected public safety. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of all of Memorial's remaining claims. View "Yakima Valley Mem'l Hosp. v. Dep't of Health" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Apple alleging federal and state antitrust claims. Plaintiff alleged that Apple encoded iTS music files with its proprietary Digital Rights Management (DRM), called FairPlay, which rendered iTS music and the iPod compatible only with each other. Plaintiff also alleged claims that through certain software updates, Apple excluded competitors and obtained a monopoly in the portable digital media player (PDMP) and music download markets, which inflated Apple's music prices and deflated the value of the iPod. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court's July 2009 order denying her motion to certify a class of indirect purchasers of the iPod under Rule 23(b)(3). The court concluded that, because plaintiff abandoned the individual claim for which she sought class certification, the issue of whether the district court erred in denying her motion to certify that claim for class treatment was waived. The court also concluded that the district court properly dismissed plaintiff's monopolization claim for damages based on the theory of diminution in iPod value on the ground that it was barred by Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois; properly dismissed plaintiff's claim for damages based on supracompetitive music prices; and properly dismissed plaintiff's claims for injunctive relief where plaintiff's alleged inability to play her music freely was not an "antitrust injury" that affected competition and could, therefore, not serve as the basis for injunctive relief. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of class certification and dismissal of plaintiff's complaint with prejudice. View "Somers v. Apple, Inc." on Justia Law

Gorlick sued Allied, a competitor in the auto parts market, alleging that Allied was receiving favorable prices from a manufacturer. The court concluded that Gorlick failed to show that Allied had actual knowledge, trade knowledge or a duty to inquire whether the favorable prices it received might be prohibited by the Robinson-Patman Act, 15 U.S.C. 13(f). The court also concluded that Gorlick failed to provide a plausible explanation for how the alleged agreement between a manufacturer and a distributor, concerning a product line without market dominance, caused harm to competition in the entire automotive exhaust product market. Even assuming that a vertical agreement existed and that it affected the price of the products at issue, there's no plausible showing of harm to competition in the market for automotive exhaust products as a whole. Therefore, the court concluded that Gorlick's claim under the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, failed as a matter of law. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Allied. View "Gorlick Distrib. Ctrs. v. Car Sound Exhaust Sys." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs alleged that they purchased billions of dollars worth of mobile handsets containing defendants' LCD panels and that the prices they paid for those handsets were artificially inflated because defendants had orchestrated a global conspiracy to fix the prices of LCD panels. The district court certified to the court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1292(b) "the question whether the application of California antitrust law to claims against defendants based on purchases that occurred outside California would violate the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution." Because the underlying conduct in this case involved not just the indirect purchase of price-fixed goods, but also the conspiratorial conduct that led to the sale of those goods, the court answered in the negative. To the extent a defendant's conspiratorial conduct was sufficiently connected to California, and was not "slight and casual," the application of California law to that conduct was "neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair," and the application of California law did not violate that defendant's rights under the Due Process Clause. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's order dismissing plaintiffs' California law claims and remanded for further proceedings. View "AT&T Mobility LLC, et al v. AU Optronics Corp., et al" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, cigarette vendors, appealed the district court's dismissal of their antitrust action against defendants for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Plaintiffs challenged taxes imposed by the virtue of the authority vested in an Indian tribe. The court held that the tribe did not implicitly waive its sovereign immunity by agreeing to dispute resolution procedures nor by ceding its authority to Washington State when entering into a cigarette tax contract. The court also held that federal antitrust law did not explicitly abrogate tribal immunity, and the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, was not a law of general applicability vis-a-vis the tribe. The court further held that tribal officials were protected by the tribe's sovereign immunity because they acted pursuant to the tribe's authority. The court affirmed the district court's alternative ruling that the action was barred by res judicata in light of the prior litigation in state and tribal courts. View "Miller, et al v. Wright, et al" on Justia Law

These thirteen consolidated appeals brought by class counsel and six groups of objectors (collectively, Objectors) challenged the district court's decisions regarding attorney fee awards after the settlement of an antitrust class action against West Publishing Corp. and Kaplan, Inc. In this opinion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed nine separate appeals challenging the propriety of the district court's decision to deny attorneys' fees to class counsel McGuireWoods on account of a conflict of interest and to deny fees to objectors for their efforts in securing that decision. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that because the district court's decisions were not legally erroneous, the respective fee orders were affirmed, with the exception of the order denying fees to the Schneider Objectors, which the Court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "Rodriguez v. Disner" on Justia Law

In a class action, any settlement must be approved by the court to ensure that class counsel and the named plaintiffs do not place their own interests above those of the absent class members. In this false advertising case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confronted a class action settlement, negotiated prior to class certification, that included cy pres distributions of money and food to unidentified charities. The settlement also included $2 million in attorneys' fees, the equivalent of a $2,100 hourly rate, while offering class members a sum of $15. The Court set aside the class settlement, holding (1) the district court did not apply the correct legal standards governing cy pres distributions and thus abused its discretion in approving the settlement; and (2) the settlement failed because the negotiated attorneys' fees were excessive. Remanded. View "Dennis v. Berg" on Justia Law