Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—NDCal: Triable Issues of Fact Precluded Summary Judgment in LCD Panel Maker’s Favor, (Dec 17, 2012)

By E. Darius Sturmer, J.D.

A manufacturer of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (LCD) panels used in consumer electronics, Mitsui & Co. (Taiwan), Ltd., was not entitled to summary judgment in its favor on price fixing claims asserted under federal and state antitrust law by wholesale electronics distributor Electrograph Systems, Inc., the federal district court in San Francisco has ruled (In re: TFT-LCD (Flat Panel) Antitrust Litigation, December 13, 2012, Illston, S.). Mitsui’s motion for partial summary judgment was therefore denied.

The court rejected Mitsui’s arguments that there was no direct evidence that it participated in the alleged price fixing conspiracy and that any circumstantial evidence of such participation did not tend to exclude the possibility that it acted independently. Although there was no smoking gun linking the company to a particular set of meetings identified as central to the claims, Electrograph had presented admissible evidence from which a jury could conclude that Mitsui participated in the overarching conspiracy, the court decided. This included evidence of exchanges of pricing and other proprietary LCD panel information with other defendants. Whether these exchanges were permissible competitive behavior was a matter of evidentiary interpretation not appropriate for resolution on summary judgment, the court said.

Electrograph also presented sufficient evidence of injury caused by Mitsui’s activity, the court held. The complaining distributor’s offering of emails reflecting the defending manufacturer’s alleged misconduct created a triable issue of fact as to whether the prices of the panels at issue, sold as Sanyo products, were “anything other than competitive”—and, thus, whether Electrograph suffered injury.

Because there were triable issues of fact with respect to Electrograph’s Sherman Act claims, it followed that the company’s state law antitrust claims based on the same alleged conduct could not be disposed of on the ground that the antitrust laws in those states were construed in accordance with federal law, the court added.

The consolidated multidistrict litigation is No. M 07-1827 SI, MDL No. 1827. The court’s order relates to Case No. C 10-0117 SI within that litigation.

Philip J. Iovieno (Boies, Schiller & Flexnor LLP) for Electrograph Systems, Inc. Erin Murdock-Park (Baker & Hostetler LLP) for Mitsui & Co. (Taiwan), Ltd.

Cases: Antitrust CaliforniaNews