134
Opinion of the Court
Palmer v. BRG of Ga., Inc., 498 U. S. 46, 49-50 (1990) (per curiam) (finding horizontal market division per se illegal).
The Court has found the per se rule applicable in certain group boycott cases. Thus, in Fashion Originators' Guild of America, Inc. v. FTC, 312 U. S. 457 (1941), this Court considered a group boycott created by an agreement among a group of clothing designers, manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers. The defendant designers, manufacturers, and suppliers had promised not to sell their clothes to retailers who bought clothes from competing manufacturers and suppliers. The defendants wanted to present evidence that would show their agreement was justified because the boycotted competitors used "pira[ted]" fashion designs. Id., at 467. But the Court wrote that "it was not error to refuse to hear the evidence offered"—evidence that the agreement was reasonable and necessary to "protect . . . against the devastating evils" of design pirating—for that evidence "is no more material than would be the reasonableness of the prices fixed" by a price-fixing agreement. Id., at 467-468.
In Klor's the Court also applied the per se rule. The Court considered a boycott created when a retail store, Broadway-Hale, and 10 household appliance manufacturers and their distributors agreed that the distributors would not sell, or would sell only at discriminatory prices, household appliances to Broadway-Hale's small, nearby competitor, namely, Klor's. 359 U. S., at 208-209. The defendants had submitted undisputed evidence that their agreement hurt only one competitor (Klor's) and that so many other nearby appliance-selling competitors remained that competition in the marketplace continued to thrive. Id., at 209-210. The Court held that this evidence was beside the point. The conspiracy was "not to be tolerated merely because the victim is just one merchant." Id., at 213. The Court thereby inferred injury to the competitive process itself from the nature of the boycott agreement. And it forbade, as a matter
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007