Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—D. Conn.: Vet’s conspiracy claim against state board put down, (Jan 20, 2016)

By Greg Hammond, J.D.

A veterinarian could not proceed with claims that the Connecticut Board of Veterinary Medicine and its members conspired to exclude him from the Connecticut market for veterinary services. The federal district court in New Haven, Connecticut, dismissed the veterinarian’s Sherman Act conspiracy and group boycott claim, finding that the veterinarian failed to plead factual allegations affirmatively evincing the existence of an agreement among the defendants and failed to point to any allegations of defendants’ conduct from which the court could remotely infer such an agreement (Robb v. Connecticut Board of Veterinary Medicine, January 20, 2016, Haight, C.).

The veterinarian alleged that the Board and its members conspired to restrain trade through an agreement to remove from the Connecticut market for veterinary services any veterinarian who offered certain reduced dosages of rabies vaccine to animal-patients, and that the Board was effectuating this anticompetitive scheme through an administrative proceeding against him. Conversely, the Board moved to dismiss the “Conspiracy to Restrain Trade—Group Boycott” claim.

Article III standing. The court first concluded that the veterinarian had Article III standing to bring his antitrust claim because: (1) allegations of harm to the market for veterinary services—in that he and other like-minded veterinarians could properly compete in the market because they could provide size-appropriate vaccinations given the administrative proceedings that they faced—was sufficient to allege “antitrust injury”; (2) the alleged injuries were “fairly traceable” to the Board’s conduct in light of the fact that the adjudicator of any administrative proceeding challenging such vaccination procedures was likely to have predetermined its outcome for anticompetitive reasons, demonstrating a causal connection between the Board’s conduct and the alleged injury; and (3) the permanent injunctive relief that the veterinarian sought—which would bar the Board and its members from illegally conspiring to remove veterinarians from the market on the basis of an anticompetitive rationale—would likely redress the alleged illegally caused harm to the veterinarian market.

No allegations of illegal agreement. Although the veterinarian had Article III standing, his claim was dismissed because he: (1) failed to plead a single factual allegation affirmatively evincing the existence of an agreement amongst the defendants; and (2) he pointed to no proper allegations of defendants’ conduct from which the court could remotely infer such an agreement. The court noted that the veterinarian was forced to rely solely on his allegation that the Board members had a common incentive to foreclose veterinarians such as the plaintiff from the market. However, “such naked identification of a theoretical motive to conspire, without significantly more, is far from sufficient to establish the plausible existence of an agreement amongst competitors,” the court stated. The veterinarian consequently failed to allege a plausible claim that the defendants conspired with each other.

The case is No. 3:15-CV-00906 (CSH).

Attorneys: Joseph P. Secola (Secola Law Offices LLC) for John M. Robb. Henry A. Salton, Attorney General's Office, for Connecticut Board of Veterinary Medicine.

Companies: Connecticut Board of Veterinary Medicine

Cases: Antitrust ConnecticutNews