Verizon Communications Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP, 540 U.S. 398, 18 (2004)

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Cite as: 540 U. S. 398 (2004)

Opinion of the Court

remediation of violations of regulatory sharing requirements will ordinarily require continuing supervision of a highly detailed decree. We think that Professor Areeda got it exactly right: "No court should impose a duty to deal that it cannot explain or adequately and reasonably supervise. The problem should be deemed irremedia[ble] by antitrust law when compulsory access requires the court to assume the day-to-day controls characteristic of a regulatory agency." Areeda, 58 Antitrust L. J., at 853. In this case, respondent has requested an equitable decree to "[p]reliminarily and permanently enjoi[n] [Verizon] from providing access to the local loop market . . . to [rivals] on terms and conditions that are not as favorable" as those that Verizon enjoys. App. 49-50. An antitrust court is unlikely to be an effective dayto-day enforcer of these detailed sharing obligations.4

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The 1996 Act is, in an important respect, much more ambitious than the antitrust laws. It attempts "to eliminate the monopolies enjoyed by the inheritors of AT&T's local franchises." Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC, 535 U. S., at 476 (emphasis added). Section 2 of the Sherman Act, by contrast, seeks merely to prevent unlawful monopolization. It would be a serious mistake to conflate the two goals. The Sherman Act is indeed the "Magna Carta of free enterprise," United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U. S. 596, 610 (1972), but it does not give judges carte blanche to insist that a monopolist alter its way of doing business whenever some

4 The Court of Appeals also thought that respondent's complaint might state a claim under a "monopoly leveraging" theory (a theory barely discussed by respondent, see Brief for Respondent 24, n. 10). We disagree. To the extent the Court of Appeals dispensed with a requirement that there be a "dangerous probability of success" in monopolizing a second market, it erred, Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan, 506 U. S. 447, 459 (1993). In any event, leveraging presupposes anticompetitive conduct, which in this case could only be the refusal-to-deal claim we have rejected.

415

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