miriam gauthier

, which were major customers of the japanese companies. respondents claimed that various aspects of the alleged conspiracy violated sections 1 and 2 of the sherman act, 15 u. after eight years of discovery, petitioners filed motions for summary judgment. /2/ the district court adopted a comprehensive case management procedure for resolving these motions on the enormous record. the court required respondents to identify -- with preclusive effect -- all the evidence on which they planned to rely at trial; /3/ the court then held a five-week evidentiary hearing and ruled on the admissibility of that evidence before considering the summary judgment motions.	miriam gauthier
in brief, the court ruled that, for various reasons, a large part of the evidence on which respondents chiefly relied was inadmissible and thus could not be used to defeat summary judgment (see pet. the district court subsequently ruled, in a 430-page opinion, that all petitioners were entitled to summary judgment on all antitrust counts, primarily because respondents had failed to present any admissible, probative evidence that would establish the existence of the alleged conspiracy (id.
the district court thus found it unnecessary to rule on petitioners' contention that much of their allegedly anticompetitive conduct was compelled by the government of japan and for that reason could not form the basis of an antitrust violation (id.
in its opinion granting summary judgment on the antitrust allegations, the district court rejected the remaining dumping claims (id. the court of appeals reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment on all antitrust counts, except as to defendants sony, sears, and motorola (pet. the court of appeals explicitly approved the innovative procedure used by the district court to resolve the summary judgment motions on the massive record (id. the court of appeals concluded, however, that many of the district court's evidentiary rulings were wrong.
in particular, the court of appeals found that the district court had erred in excluding certain records of japanese administrative proceedings against some petitioners in connection with resale price maintenance activities in japan, various internal documents of petitioners (such as diaries and memoranda), and the testimony of respondents' experts based on those records and documents. after thus augmenting the body of evidence to be weighed in deciding the summary judgment motions, the court of appeals proceeded to consider whether respondents' antitrust theory could withstand scrutiny in light of that evidence. the court of appeals concluded that this amounted to sufficient evidence of the alleged conspiracy to preclude the entry of summary judgment for petitioners on the antitrust counts (id. the court of appeals also rejected petitioners' contention that they were entitled to summary judgment because the japanese ministry of international trade and industry (miti) had compelled them to abide by the check price agreement and make use of the five-company rule, two factors that the court regarded as key pieces of evidence tending to establish the conspiracy alleged by respondents (pet.
in support of their contention, petitioners had cited a formal statement submitted by miti to the district court in 1975 (id. the court of appeals "assume(d), without deciding, that a government-mandated export cartel arrangement fixing minimum export prices would be outside the ambit of section 1 of the sherman act" (id. but the court added that it "cannot be said with any degree of certainty that" the check prices "were in fact determined by the japanese government," and asserted that there was "no record evidence suggesting that the five-company rule originated with the japanese government" (id. /5/ the court of appeals accordingly relied on the check price agreement as one of the crucial pieces of evidence of the alleged conspiracy that would preclude the grant of summary judgment (id. the court concluded that the products sold in japan and those sold in the united states were sufficiently comparable to satisfy the requirements of the antidumping act (pet. in setting aside the award of summary judgment, the court of appeals disregarded the import of first national bank v.
that case establishes that an antitrust plaintiff seeking to prove the existence of an anticompetitive conspiracy on the basis of circumstantial evidence can defeat summary judgment only by showing that the evidence is more consistent with an inference that the challenged conduct resulted from the alleged conspiracy than with an inference that it was the result of independent action. this rule forestalls the possibility that parallel behavior manifesting only the workings of a competitive market, will be deemed illegal, an outcome that could well penalize unilateral, procompetitive conduct that is benefitting consumers. the court of appeals believed that it was free to depart from the cities service standard because respondents had adduced not only evidence of parallel conduct, but also "direct" evidence that petitioners had colluded -- that is, evidence that petitioners had entered into a retail price maintenance agreement concerning sales in japan, and had adhered to the check price agreement and the five-company rule in exporting televisions to the united states.
but that evidence did not have any necessary tendency to establish the existence of the alleged agreement to charge predatory prices in the united states. at best, the evidence cited by the court of appeals pointed up the opportunity for collusive activity, and thus constituted only additional circumstantial evidence of the alleged predatory pricing agreement. the "direct" evidence in this case therefore does not obviate the need to address the central inquiry of cities service: whether the parallel low pricing behavior cited as the crucial element of the alleged conspiracy is more reasonably viewed, in the context of the additional circumstantial evidence, as the result of collusion rather than of independent action. here, the evidence is at least as consistent with a theory of independent conduct as it is with conspiracy. as the district court recognized, petitioners' parallel activities were plausibly explained as independent efforts to penetrate a new market.
and the economic illogic of respondents' theory also makes it unlikely that petitioners were engaging in concerted predatory conduct. in these circumstances, the district court's award of summary judgment to petitioners was entirely appropriate.
the court of appeals also erred by directly predicating its reversal of the district court in part on of conduct by petitioners that had been compelled by the japanese government. as this and other courts have suggested, activity that by foreign sovereign should not lead to in antitrust suit. this principle follows from two general considerations -- comity and separation of -- that have influenced the judicial resolution of involving the interests of governments, and that led to creation of act of doctrine. while nothing in text or history of antitrust laws expressly discusses considerations of or of state, those doctrines were a -accepted part of legal context in which congress acted when it adopted the sherman act.. ..