Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_11-cv-05514/USCOURTS-cand-3_11-cv-05514-22/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 410
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Cause of Action: 15:1 Antitrust Litigation

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

IN RE: CATHODE RAY TUBE (CRT)

ANTITRUST LITIGATION

This Order Relates To:

Best Buy Co., Inc., et al. v. Hitachi, Ltd., et 

al., No. 11-cv-05513-JST

Best Buy Co., Inc., et al. v. Technicolor SA, 

et al., No. 13-cv-05264-JST

Target Corp. v. Chunghwa Pictures Tubes,

Ltd., et al., No. 3:07-cv-05514-JST

Target Corp. v. Technicolor SA, et al., Case

No. 3:11-cv-05514-JST 

Alfred H. Siegel, as Trustee of the Circuit 

City Stores, Inc. Liquidating Trust v. Hitachi, 

Ltd., et al., No. 11-cv-05502-JST

Sears, Roebuck and Co., et. al. v. Chunghwa

Picture Tubes, Ltd., et al., No. 11-cv-5514

Sharp Electronics Corporation, et al. v.

Hitachi, Ltd., et al., No. 13-cv-01173-SC

Sharp Electronics Corp., et al. v. Koninklijke

Philips Electronics N.V., et al., No. 13-cv2776SC

ViewSonic Corporation v. Chunghwa Picture

Tubes, Ltd., et al., No. 14-cv-02510

 MDL No. 1917

Case No. C-07-5944 JST

ORDER RE MOTIONS IN LIMINE

ECF No. 3558, 3583

Below are the Court’s rulings on two of the currently pending motions in limine. 

Case 3:11-cv-05514-JST Document 147 Filed 11/15/16 Page 1 of 5
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United States District Court

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Direct Action Plaintiffs’ Motion in Limine No. 11 (ECF No. 3558)

On December 5, 2012, the European Commission (“EC”) fined seven international groups 

of companies a total of €1,470,515,000 for participating in global cathode ray tube (“CRT”) 

cartels. By this motion, Plaintiffs seek “to establish the admissibility and preclusive effect of 

certain of the EC Decision’s findings, which are identified in highlighting on attached Exhibit A” 

to the motion.1 If the Court denies this request, Plaintiffs seek an order admitting the EC Decision 

into evidence. 

Plaintiffs’ request for preclusive effect invokes the doctrine of offensive nonmutual issue 

preclusion. The Ninth Circuit has specified that the doctrine is available 

only if (1) there was a full and fair opportunity to litigate the 

identical issue in the prior action; (2) the issue was actually litigated 

in the prior action; (3) the issue was decided in a final judgment; and 

(4) the party against whom issue preclusion is asserted was a party 

or in privity with a party to the prior action.

Syverson v. Int'l Bus. Machines Corp., 472 F.3d 1072, 1078 (9th Cir. 2007) (citations omitted). 

Even when these requirements are met, however, the district court retains “broad discretion” “to 

take potential shortcomings or indices of unfairness into account when considering whether to 

apply offensive nonmutual issue preclusion.” Id. at 1078 (citing Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 

439 U.S. 322, 331 (1979)). The “potential shortcomings” or “indices of unfairness” include 

whether 

(1) “the plaintiff had the incentive to adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude 

in the hope that the first action by another plaintiff would result in a 

favorable judgment” which might then be used against the losing 

defendant; (2) the defendant had the incentive to defend the first suit 

with full vigor, especially when future suits are not foreseeable; 

(3) one or more judgments entered before the one invoked as 

preclusive are inconsistent with the latter or each other, suggesting 

that reliance on a single adverse judgment would be unfair; and, 

(4) the defendant might be afforded procedural opportunities in the 

later action that were unavailable in the first “and that could readily 

cause a different result.” 

Syverson v. Int’l Bus. Machines Corp., 472 F.3d 1072, 1078–79 (9th Cir. 2007) (quoting Parklane, 

439 U.S. at 330–31). The Court may also consider the lack of a jury trial in the prior proceeding 

 

1

The Court believes the appropriate exhibit identifier is actually “J.”

Case 3:11-cv-05514-JST Document 147 Filed 11/15/16 Page 2 of 5
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United States District Court

Northern District of California

as an additional, non-dispositive factor weighing against the application of offensive collateral 

estoppel. 

Here, the Court concludes that the Defendants “might be afforded procedural opportunities 

in [this] action that were unavailable in the first and that could readily cause a different result.” 

Among these differences are the ability of the Defendants here to take discovery and use 

compulsory process and the ability to cross-examine witnesses. Were Defendants able to crossexamine witnesses, or introduce evidence obtained in discovery, it is conceivable that a jury might 

rule differently than the EC. Also, the prior proceeding was not conducted before a jury, which 

further militates against the application of offensive non-mutual issue preclusion. For these 

reasons, the Court denies Plaintiffs’ request.

The Court also denies Plaintiffs’ request to admit the EC Decision into evidence, finding it 

barred by Federal Rule of Evidence 403. It is unclear what probative value it has, since many of 

its statements do not constitute clear factual conclusions. Finding 109, for example, states that 

“Contemporaneous evidence also suggests that the price increases in CDT were, at times, passed 

on to the downstream market of production of computer monitor tubes.” ECF No. 3580-12 at 27

(emphasis added). There are numerous difficulties with this passage: it is difficult to know how 

firm or definite the EC’s conclusion is when it states that contemporaneous evidence “suggests” 

that conclusion; it is not clear which firms passed on their price increases downstream and which 

did not; and it is not clear when this happened and when it did not, given that the EC concluded 

that the practice only happened “at times.” Finding 111, to take another example, sheds even less 

light on the facts. It states that 

The CDT Producers also agreed on coordinated output restrictions, 

aimed at reducing oversupply and achieving target prices and market 

shares (see for example Recitals (180). These arrangements began 

as arrangements to [confidentiality claim pending] and gradually 

developed into [confidentiality claim pending]. In addition, CDT 

meeting participants organized [confidentiality claim pending].

ECF No. 3580-12 at 27. The problems with this passage are self-evident. The jury cannot attach 

significance to conclusions whose entire import has been obscured by redactions. 

Case 3:11-cv-05514-JST Document 147 Filed 11/15/16 Page 3 of 5
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Even without these problems, the Court would still exclude the document. Defendants 

would be required to respond to it by demonstrating what evidence was not before the EC; to 

cross-examine the evidence that was before the EC; and, in essence, to conduct a mini-trial of the 

EC proceeding. One function of Rule 403 is to avoid the introduction of “large quantities of 

extrinsic evidence to create mini-trials regarding tangentially related matters.” Ioane v. Spjute, 

No. 1:07-CV-0620 AWI EPG, 2016 WL 4524752, at *11 (E.D. Cal. Aug. 29, 2016). An even 

greater danger beyond the waste of time is the unfair prejudice to Defendants. If a jury hears that 

some or all of the Defendants have been found liable by the EC, it will be very difficult for the 

jury not to find them liable as well. 

Plaintiffs’ Motion in Limine Number Eleven is denied. 

Defendants’ Motion in Limine No. 2 (ECF No. 3583)

By this motion, Defendants seek “to exclude all evidence or mention of any

antitrust investigations in foreign jurisdictions.” ECF No. 3583 at 1. The motion is addressed to 

the broad category of antitrust investigations, adjudications, and orders, but does not identify the 

specific evidence that Defendants seek to exclude (with one exception, which the Court addresses 

below). 

Defendants’ motion as to this broad category of information is denied. Defendants have 

not placed the evidence in question before the Court, and the Court cannot rule in a vacuum. See

Harvey v. Navajo Cty., No. 3:10-CV-08025 JWS, 2012 WL 1556558, at *2 (D. Ariz. May 2, 

2012) (“The court may exclude specific photographs when it rules on the parties’ exhibit 

objections in a separate order, but the motion in limine will be denied because it sweeps too 

broadly through the exhibits.”); Mabrey v. Wizard Fisheries, Inc., No. C05 1499 RSL, 2007 WL 

1876540, at *1 (W.D. Wash. June 27, 2007) (“In their motion in limine to ‘exclude any opinions 

by plaintiff's experts which are not based on the actual facts of the case,’ defendants do not 

identify any specific opinion to be excluded . . . . Without offering a specific opinion to be 

excluded under this rule, the Court cannot preemptively grant defendant's motion in limine.”); 

Coulbourn v. Air & Liquid Sys. Corp., No. CV-13-08141-PCT-SRB, 2016 WL 5921255, at *3 (D. 

Ariz. Jan. 6, 2016) (“Without knowing the specific pieces of evidence Defendants seek to exclude 

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the Court cannot determine its relevance[.]”). 

Subject to the exception below, Defendants’ Motion in Limine Number Two is therefore 

denied without prejudice to Defendants objecting to specific items of evidence at trial. 

The one exception is a press release issued by the Korea Fair Trade Commission

(“KFTC”), which describes in very general terms that body’s determination that manufacturers of 

color display tubes (“CDTs”), a particular kind of the cathode ray tube at issue in this case, 

“agreed on fixing prices and reducing output of CDTs in . . . secret meetings which took place in 

various countries.” ECF 3787-2 at 2. 

The KFTC press release is inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 because its 

admission would result in unfair prejudice and the undue consumption of time. The unfair 

prejudice would result from the dispositive effect a jury is likely to give the document, at least as 

to any Defendant mentioned in it. The undue consumption of time would result from Defendants’ 

need to introduce evidence litigating the merits of the KFTC press release as opposed to the 

existence of the conspiracy alleged in Plaintiffs’ complaint. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: November 15, 2016

______________________________________

JON S. TIGAR

United States District Judge

Case 3:11-cv-05514-JST Document 147 Filed 11/15/16 Page 5 of 5