The European Commission has fined five manufacturers of liquid crystal display (“LCD”) panels a total of 649 million euros (approximately US$ 860 million) for participating in a price-fixing conspiracy between October 2001 and February 2006.

LCD panels are the main component of the flat screens used in televisions, laptop computers and desktop computer monitors. 

In a press release, the Commission stated that the LCD panel manufacturers operated a cartel which not only agreed on prices but also exchanged information on future production planning, capacity utilization, and commercial conditions.  They were found to have violated Article 101 of the EU treaty, which prohibits price-fixing and other restrictions of competition. 

Four of the firms fined by the Commission are Taiwanese corporations: Chimei InnoLux (300 million euros), AU Optronics (117 million euros), Chunghwa Picture Tubes (9 million euros), and HannStar Display (8 million euros).

The South Korean based Samsung Electronics was found to have participated in the conspiracy but escaped being fined.  The company received full immunity under the Commission’s leniency program for having brought the cartel to the Commission’s attention and helping prove the infringement.

LG Display, also of South Korea, was ordered to pay 215 million euros.  However, LG escaped a significantly greater fine.  Its fine for the 2001-2005 period was reduced by 50% because it was “second in the door” in applying to the Commission for leniency.  In addition, it was not fined for 2006 because it was the first to inform the Commission that the cartel had continued after 2005.   click here for more »

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has denied plaintiffs’ motion to reconsider its September 16 2010, ruling that plaintiffs in the ATM Fee Antitrust Litigation have no standing to pursue their price fixing claims against an ATM network and a group of banks.  The District Court dismissed plaintiffs’ claims under the rule of Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720 (1977), that generally only direct purchasers may recover antitrust damages.    

Plaintiffs, a putative class of bank customers, brought an action against the STAR ATM Network and several large banks including Bank of America, N.A., JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Citibank, N.A., Suntrust, and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A./Wachovia, alleging that they conspired to illegally fix interchange fees, which the card-issuer banks pay to ATM owners for each ATM transaction.  Plaintiffs alleged that after paying inflated interchange fees, the issuing banks pass on the overcharges to bank customers through increased “foreign ATM fees” – which are paid by customers when they use an ATM owned by another bank or an independent ATM operator.  

As the court determined in September, plaintiffs were not the ones who paid the allegedly inflated interchange fees – their banks did.  Thus, the plaintiffs were not directly harmed.  Also, plaintiffs did not allege that defendants conspired to illegally fix the “foreign ATM fees” – the fees plaintiffs did directly pay.  As such, plaintiffs were indirect purchasers to whom the direct purchaser banks passed on all or a part of the allegedly fixed fees, and their claims were barred by the Illinois Brick indirect purchaser rule.  The Court also determined that none of the exceptions to that indirect purchaser rule applied.

Plaintiffs’ last-ditch attempt to vacate the decision was shot down.  The Court found that plaintiffs did not “present new evidence or raise an intervening change in the law” justifying vacating the decision.

A worldwide antitrust crackdown on scrap metal cartels has landed in Korea with the Korean Fair Trade Commission’s recent imposition of a $1.45 million fine against 25 scrap metal processors for price fixing.

Scrap metal processors purchase the scraps that are produced by the steel production process.  The processors in turn sort and clean the scrap metal and sell the final product to end users, frequently other steel mills.  Because of its enforcement action, the Korean Commission expects prices paid by end users to fall in the near future.

The scrap metal industry has also been the focus of antitrust claims in the United States. For example, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a $23 million jury award against three scrap metal processors in 2008.  Plaintiffs in that case, In re Scrap Metal Antitrust Litigation, accused the defendants of bid rigging and market allocation, among other charges.  The U.S. Department of Justice also brought criminal charges against two scrap metal dealers for price fixing, but the companies were acquitted in 2009.

Korea and the United States are not alone in closely scrutinizing the scrap metal industry.  Earlier this year, South Africa’s Competition Commission announced it was referring an investigation into 13 scrap metal processors to its Competition Tribunal.  The decision concerns various charges, including price fixing, market allocation, and bid rigging.  The referral followed a four-year investigation into the South African scrap metal industry.

A group of Wisconsin consumers is asking the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin to mash the alleged “OPEC of potatoes” in a class action alleging price fixing by a purported cartel of U.S. and Canadian potato growers and their co-conspirators, including leading agricultural technologist Bayer CropScience.

This case – Rizzo, et al. v. United Potato Growers of America, Inc. et al. – is the third putative class action filed against the alleged cartel. Similar cases have also been filed in federal courts in the District of Idaho (Brigiotta’s Farmland Produce and Garden Center Inc.  v. United States Potato Growers of Idaho Inc., et al., No. 10-CV-307-BLW) and the Northern District of California (Marvilla v. United Potato Growers of Idaho, Inc. et al., No. 10-CV-3954).

Defendants in all of the cases include United Potato Growers of America, United Potato Growers of Idaho (UPGI), other regional and national organizations and their members, as well as General Mills, Dole Food and Bayer CropScience.  (General Mills is not named in the Wisconsin case, and Dole is named only in the Idaho case.)   

Plaintiffs are all purchasers of potatoes – indirect in Wisconsin and California (e.g., consumers and retailers) and direct in Idaho (e.g., wholesalers).  They claim that potatoes are “the most important vegetable in the diet of United States consumers,” and comprise a “multi-billion dollar” market.  Plaintiffs allege that defendants control 80% of that market (by acreage of production).

The Wisconsin complaint paints a picture of potato farming that is far from the potato farmers painted by Van Gogh.  Plaintiffs allege egregious conduct, including “brib[ing], threaten[ing] and coerc[ing],” “satellite imagery [and] fly-overs,” and “punish[ing] violators’ of the cartel’s directives.”  

Plaintiffs claim that the cartel attempts to shield its actions behind the Capper-Volstead Act (7 U.S.C. § 291), a 1922 federal statute that exempts certain agricultural associations from antitrust scrutiny.  However, plaintiffs say, defendants may enjoy no such exemption.  First, they are not “genuine cooperatives,” and second, their illegal acts “have stripped them of any immunity.”

All three cases may soon be in the U.S. District Court in Idaho.  The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is considering an unopposed motion to centralize them there.  On October 6, 2010, Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the federal court in Idaho appointed an executive committee of interim class counsel including Labaton Sucharow LLP and Spector Roseman Kodroff & Willis PC, with Hausfeld LLP as its chair, although class certification has not yet been decided.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the first guilty pleas in its ongoing investigation into a price-fixing cartel in the worldwide refrigerator compressor market.

According to the DOJ, Japan-based Panasonic Corp. and Embraco North America Inc., a Brazilian subsidiary of Whirlpool Corp., agreed to pay $49.1 million and $91.8 million respectively for a price-fixing conspiracy that lasted from October 2004 until December 2007.

Both companies stake claim to significant shares of the worldwide compressor market with Panasonic occupying 13% and Embraco holding 25%.  Embraco will also pay a $56.5 million fine in Brazil for anticompetitive conduct.  The DOJ has not indicated whether other manufacturers will be entering additional guilty pleas in the near future.