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Price Fixing

Caselaw:

Catalano v. Target Sales (1980)

  • Holding: agreement limiting credit is per se illegal
    • D's barrier to removal argument: limiting credit raises the price, can't say that raising the price enables entry, antitrust is specifically meant to limit this type of conduct
    • D's price transparency argument: transparency helps competitors more than customers, secret price cuttingn is a way to steal customers
  • Facts: agreement between beer wholesalers D that (1) payment must be made in advance or upon delivery and (2) retailers will not be provided credit
    • D argues that (1) allows wholesalers who can't accommodate credit to compete with those that can and (2) improves price transparency for consumers.
  • Note: not a defense to reduce competition on some dimension of price to make the main price more transparent (this is an easy case)