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Matsushita v. Zenith Ratio Corp. :: 475 U.S. 574 (1986) :: Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center Log In
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Matsushita v. Zenith Ratio Corp. 475 U.S. 574 (1986)
U.S. Supreme CourtMatsushita v. Zenith Ratio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986)Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp.No. 83-2004Argued November 12, 1985Decided March 26, 1986475 U.S. 574CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
(a) The "direct evidence" on which the Court of Appeals relied -- petitioners' alleged supracompetitive pricing in Japan, the "five-company Page 475 U. S. 575 rule" by which each Japanese producer was permitted to sell only to five American distributors, and the "check-prices" (minimum prices fixed by agreement with the Japanese Government for CEPs exported to the United States) insofar as they established minimum prices in the United States -- cannot, by itself, give respondents a cognizable claim against petitioners for antitrust damages. Pp. 475 U. S. 582-583.
723 F.2d 238, reversed and remanded. Page 475 U. S. 576
Stating the facts of this case is a daunting task. The opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit runs to 69 pages; the primary opinion of the District Court is more than three times as long. In re Japanese Electronic Products Page 475 U. S. 577 Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 238 (CA3 1983); 513 F.Supp. 1100 (ED Pa.1981). Two respected District Judges each have authored a number of opinions in this case; the published ones alone would fill an entire volume of the Federal Supplement. In addition, the parties have filed a 40-volume appendix in this Court that is said to contain the essence of the evidence on which the District Court and the Court of Appeals based their respective decisions.
Petitioners, defendants below, are 21 corporations that manufacture or sell "consumer electronic products" (CEPs) -- for the most part, television sets. Petitioners include both Japanese manufacturers of CEPs and American firms, controlled by Japanese parents, that sell the Japanese-manufactured products. Respondents, plaintiffs below, are Zenith Radio Corporation (Zenith) and National Union Electric Corporation (NUE). Zenith is an American firm that manufactures and sells television sets. NUE is the corporate successor to Emerson Radio Company, an American firm that manufactured and sold television sets until 1970, when it withdrew from the market after sustaining substantial losses. Zenith and NUE began this lawsuit in 1974, [Footnote 1] claiming that petitioners had illegally conspired to drive Page 475 U. S. 578 American firms from the American CEP market. According to respondents, the gist of this conspiracy was a
The District Court then turned to petitioners' motions for summary judgment. In an opinion spanning 217 pages, the court found that the admissible evidence did not raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of the alleged Page 475 U. S. 579 conspiracy. At bottom, the court found, respondents' claims rested on the inferences that could be drawn from petitioners' parallel conduct in the Japanese and American markets, and from the effects of that conduct on petitioners' American competitors. 513 F.Supp. at 1125-1127. After reviewing the evidence both by category and in toto, the court found that any inference of conspiracy was unreasonable, because (i) some portions of the evidence suggested that petitioners conspired in ways that did not injure respondents, and (ii) the evidence that bore directly on the alleged price-cutting conspiracy did not rebut the more plausible inference that petitioners were cutting prices to compete in the American market, and not to monopolize it. Summary judgment therefore was granted on respondents' claims under § 1 of the Sherman Act and the Wilson Tariff Act. Because the Sherman Act § 2 claims, which alleged that petitioners had combined to monopolize the American CEP market, were functionally indistinguishable from the § 1 claims, the court dismissed them also. Finally, the court found that the Robinson-Patman Act claims depended on the same supposed conspiracy as the Sherman Act claims. Since the court had found no genuine issue of fact as to the conspiracy, it entered judgment in petitioners' favor on those claims as well. [Footnote 3] Page 475 U. S. 580
"2. Petitioners had relatively higher fixed costs than their American counterparts, and therefore needed to Page 475 U. S. 581 operate at something approaching full capacity in order to make a profit. Ibid."
Based on inferences from the foregoing conclusions, [Footnote 5] the Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market. The court apparently did not consider whether it was as plausible to conclude that petitioners' price-cutting behavior was independent, and not conspiratorial. Page 475 U. S. 582
We begin by emphasizing what respondents' claim is not. Respondents cannot recover antitrust damages based solely on an alleged cartelization of the Japanese market, because American antitrust laws do not regulate the competitive conditions of other nations' economies. United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, 148 F.2d 416, 443 (CA2 1945) (L. Hand, J.); 1 P. Areeda & D. Turner, Antitrust Law ¦ 236d (1978). [Footnote 6] Nor can respondents recover damages for Page 475 U. S. 583 any conspiracy by petitioners to charge higher than competitive prices in the American market. Such conduct would indeed violate the Sherman Act, United States v. Trenton Potteries Co., 273 U. S. 392 (1927); United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 310 U. S. 223 (1940), but it could not injure respondents: as petitioners' competitors, respondents stand to gain from any conspiracy to raise the market price in CEPs. Cf. Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 429 U. S. 488-489 (1977). Finally, for the same reason, respondents cannot recover for a conspiracy to impose nonprice restraints that have the effect of either raising market price or limiting output. Such restrictions, though harmful to competition, actually benefit competitors by making supracompetitive pricing more attractive. Thus, neither petitioners' alleged supracompetitive pricing in Japan, nor the five-company rule that limited distribution in this country, nor the check-prices, insofar as they established minimum prices in this country, can, by themselves, give respondents a cognizable claim against petitioners for antitrust damages. The Court of Appeals therefore erred to the extent that it found evidence of these alleged conspiracies to be "direct evidence" of a conspiracy that injured respondents. See 723 F.2d at 304-305. Page 475 U. S. 584
The Court of Appeals found that respondents' allegation of a horizontal conspiracy to engage in predatory pricing, [Footnote 8] Page 475 U. S. 585 if proved, [Footnote 9] would be a per se violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act. 723 F.2d at 306. Petitioners did not appeal from that conclusion. The issue in this case thus becomes whether respondents adduced sufficient evidence in support of their theory to survive summary judgment. We therefore examine the principles that govern the summary judgment determination.
To survive petitioners' motion for summary judgment, [Footnote 10] respondents must establish that there is a genuine issue of material Page 475 U. S. 586 fact as to whether petitioners entered into an illegal conspiracy that caused respondents to suffer a cognizable injury. Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 56(e); [Footnote 11] First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U. S. 253, 391 U. S. 288-289 (1968). This showing has two components. First, respondents must show more than a conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws; they must show an injury to them resulting from the illegal conduct. Respondents charge petitioners with a whole host of conspiracies in restraint of trade. Supra at 475 U. S. 582-583. Except for the alleged conspiracy to monopolize the American market through predatory pricing, these alleged conspiracies could not have caused respondents to suffer an "antitrust injury," Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. at 492 U. S. 489, because they actually tended to benefit respondents. Supra at 475 U. S. 582-583. Therefore, unless, in context, evidence of these "other" conspiracies raises a genuine issue concerning the existence of a predatory pricing conspiracy, that evidence cannot defeat petitioners' summary judgment motion.
Second, the issue of fact must be "genuine." Fed.Rules Civ.Proc. 56(c), (e). When the moving party has carried its burden under Rule 56(c), [Footnote 12] its opponent must do more than simply show that there is some metaphysical doubt as to the material facts. See DeLuca v. Atlantic Refining Co., 176 F.2d 421, 423 (CA2 1949) (L. Hand, J.), cert. denied, 338 U.S. 943 (1950); 10A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2727 (1983); Clark, Special Problems Page 475 U. S. 587 in Drafting and Interpreting Procedural Codes and Rules, 3 Vand.L.Rev. 493, 504-505 (1950). Cf. Sartor v. Arkansas Natural Gas Corp., 321 U. S. 620, 321 U. S. 627 (1944). In the language of the Rule, the nonmoving party must come forward with "specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial." Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 56(e) (emphasis added). See also Advisory Committee Note to 1963 Amendment of Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 56(e), 28 U.S.C.App. p. 626 (purpose of summary judgment is to "pierce the pleadings and to assess the proof in order to see whether there is a genuine need for trial"). Where the record, taken as a whole, could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no "genuine issue for trial." Cities Service, supra, at 391 U. S. 289.
United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 Page 475 U. S. 588 U.S. 654, 369 U. S. 655 (1962). But antitrust law limits the range of permissible inferences from ambiguous evidence in a § 1 case. Thus, in Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U. S. 752 (1984), we held that conduct as consistent with permissible competition as with illegal conspiracy does not, standing alone, support an inference of antitrust conspiracy. Id. at 465 U. S. 764. See also Cities Service, supra, at 391 U. S. 280. To survive a motion for summary judgment or for a directed verdict, a plaintiff seeking damages for a violation of § 1 must present evidence "that tends to exclude the possibility" that the alleged conspirators acted independently. 465 U.S. at 465 U. S. 764. Respondents in this case, in other words, must show that the inference of conspiracy is reasonable in light of the competing inferences of independent action or collusive action that could not have harmed respondents. See Cities Service, supra, at 391 U. S. 280.
A predatory pricing conspiracy is, by nature, speculative. Any agreement to price below the competitive level requires the conspirators to forgo profits that free competition would offer them. The forgone profits may be considered an investment in the future. For the investment to be rational, Page 475 U. S. 589 the conspirators must have a reasonable expectation of recovering, in the form of later monopoly profits, more than the losses suffered. As then-Professor Bork, discussing predatory pricing by a single firm, explained:
R. Bork, The Antitrust Paradox 145 (1978). See also McGee, Predatory Pricing Revisited, 23 J.Law & Econ. 289, 295-297 (1980). As this explanation shows, the success of such schemes is inherently uncertain: the short-run loss is definite, but the long-run gain depends on successfully neutralizing the competition. Moreover, it is not enough simply to achieve monopoly power, as monopoly pricing may breed quick entry by new competitors eager to share in the excess profits. The success of any predatory scheme depends on maintaining monopoly power for long enough both to recoup the predator's losses and to harvest some additional gain. Absent some assurance that the hoped-for monopoly will materialize, and that it can be sustained for a significant period of time, "[t]he predator must make a substantial investment with no assurance that it will pay off." Easterbrook, Predatory Strategies and Counterstrategies, 48 U.Chi.L.Rev. 263, 268 (1981). For this reason, there is a consensus among commentators that predatory pricing schemes are rarely tried, and even more rarely successful. See, e.g., Bork, supra, at 149-155; Areeda & Turner, Predatory Pricing and Related Practices Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 88 Harv.L.Rev. 697, 699 (1975); Easterbrook, supra; Koller, The Myth of Predatory Pricing -- An Empirical Study, Page 475 U. S. 590 4 Antitrust Law & Econ.Rev. 105 (1971); McGee, Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N.J.) Case, 1 J.Law & Econ. 137 (1958); McGee, Predatory Pricing Revisited, 23 J.Law & Econ., at 292-294. See also Northeastern Telephone Co. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 651 F.2d 76, 88 (CA2 1981) ("[N]owhere in the recent outpouring of literature on the subject do commentators suggest that [predatory] pricing is either common or likely to increase"), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943 (1982).
Finally, if predatory pricing conspiracies are generally unlikely to occur, they are especially so where, as here, the prospects of attaining monopoly power seem slight. In order to recoup their losses, petitioners must obtain enough market power to set higher than competitive prices, and then must sustain those prices long enough to earn in excess profits Page 475 U. S. 591 what they earlier gave up in below-cost prices. See Northeastern Telephone Co. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., supra, at 89; Areeda & Turner, 88 Harv.L.Rev. at 698. Two decades after their conspiracy is alleged to have commenced, [Footnote 13] petitioners appear to be far from achieving this goal: the two largest shares of the retail market in television sets are held by RCA and respondent Zenith, not by any of petitioners. 6 App. to Brief for Appellant in No. 81-2331 (CA3), pp. 2575a-2576a. Moreover, those shares, which together approximate 40% of sales, did not decline appreciably during the 1970's. Ibid. Petitioners' collective share rose rapidly during this period, from one-fifth or less of the relevant markets to close to 50%. 723 F.2d at 316. [Footnote 14] Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals found, however, that petitioners' share presently allows them to charge monopoly prices; to the contrary, respondents contend that the conspiracy is ongoing -- that petitioners are still artificially depressing the market price in order to drive Zenith out of the market. The data in the record strongly suggest that that goal is yet far distant. [Footnote 15] Page 475 U. S. 592
The alleged conspiracy's failure to achieve its ends in the two decades of its asserted operation is strong evidence that the conspiracy does not, in fact, exist. Since the losses in such a conspiracy accrue before the gains, they must be "repaid" with interest. And because the alleged losses have accrued over the course of two decades, the conspirators could well require a correspondingly long time to recoup. Maintaining supracompetitive prices, in turn, depends on the continued cooperation of the conspirators, on the inability of other would-be competitors to enter the market, and (not incidentally) on the conspirators' ability to escape antitrust liability for their minimum price-fixing cartel. [Footnote 16] Each of these factors weighs more heavily as the time needed to recoup losses grows. If the losses have been substantial -- as would likely be necessary Page 475 U. S. 593 in order to drive out the competition [Footnote 17] -- petitioners would most likely have to sustain their cartel for years simply to break even.
In Monsanto, we emphasized that courts should not permit factfinders to infer conspiracies when such inferences are implausible, because the effect of such practices is often to deter procompetitive conduct. Monsanto, 465 U.S. at 465 U. S. 762-764. Page 475 U. S. 594 Respondents, petitioners' competitors, seek to hold petitioners liable for damages caused by the alleged conspiracy to cut prices. Moreover, they seek to establish this conspiracy indirectly, through evidence of other combinations (such as the check-price agreements and the five-company rule) whose natural tendency is to raise prices, and through evidence of rebates and other price-cutting activities that respondents argue tend to prove a combination to suppress prices. [Footnote 19] But cutting prices in order to increase business often is the very essence of competition. Thus, mistaken inferences in cases such as this one are especially costly, because they chill the very conduct the antitrust laws are designed to protect. See Monsanto, supra, at 465 U. S. 763-764.
In most cases, this concern must be balanced against the desire that illegal conspiracies be identified and punished. That balance is, however, unusually one-sided in cases such as this one. As we earlier explained, supra at 475 U. S. 588-593, predatory pricing schemes require conspirators to suffer losses in order eventually to realize their illegal gains; moreover, the Page 475 U. S. 595 likely to fail than to succeed. These economic realities tend to make predatory pricing conspiracies self-deterring: unlike most other conduct that violates the antitrust laws, failed predatory pricing schemes are costly to the conspirators. See Easterbrook, The Limits of Antitrust, 63 Texas L.Rev. 1, 26 (1984). Finally, unlike predatory pricing by a single firm, successful predatory pricing conspiracies involving a large number of firms can be identified and punished once they succeed, since some form of minimum price-fixing agreement would be necessary in order to reap the benefits of predation. Thus, there is little reason to be concerned that, by granting summary judgment in cases where the evidence of conspiracy is speculative or ambiguous, courts will encourage such conspiracies.
The "direct evidence" on which the court relied was evidence of other combinations, not of a predatory pricing conspiracy. Evidence that petitioners conspired to raise prices in Japan provides little, if any, support for respondents' Page 475 U. S. 596 claims: a conspiracy to increase profits in one market does not tend to show a conspiracy to sustain losses in another. Evidence that petitioners agreed to fix minimum prices (through the check-price agreements) for the American market actually works in petitioners' favor, because it suggests that petitioners were seeking to place a floor under prices, rather than to lower them. The same is true of evidence that petitioners agreed to limit the number of distributors of their products in the American market -- the so-called five-company rule. That practice may have facilitated a horizontal territorial allocation, see United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U. S. 596 (1972), but its natural effect would be to raise market prices, rather than reduce them. [Footnote 20] Evidence that tends to support any of these collateral conspiracies thus says little, if anything, about the existence of a conspiracy to charge below-market prices in the American market over a period of two decades.
That being the case, the absence of any plausible motive to engage in the conduct charged is highly relevant to whether a "genuine issue for trial" exists within the meaning of Rule 56(e). Lack of motive bears on the range of permissible conclusions that might be drawn from ambiguous evidence: if petitioners had no rational economic motive to conspire, and if their conduct is consistent with other, equally plausible explanations, Page 475 U. S. 597 the conduct does not give rise to an inference of conspiracy. See Cities Service, supra, at 391 U. S. 278-280. Here, the conduct in question consists largely of (i) pricing at levels that succeeded in taking business away from respondents, and (ii) arrangements that may have limited petitioners' ability to compete with each other (and thus kept prices from going even lower). This conduct suggests either that petitioners behaved competitively, or that petitioners conspired to raise prices. Neither possibility is consistent with an agreement among 21 companies to price below market levels. Moreover, the predatory pricing scheme that this conduct is said to prove is one that makes no practical sense: it calls for petitioners to destroy companies larger and better established than themselves, a goal that remains far distant more than two decades after the conspiracy's birth. Even had they succeeded in obtaining their monopoly, there is nothing in the record to suggest that they could recover the losses they would need to sustain along the way. In sum, in light of the absence of any rational motive to conspire, neither petitioners' pricing practices, nor their conduct in the Japanese market, nor their agreements respecting prices and distribution in the American market, suffice to create a "genuine issue for trial." Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 56(e). [Footnote 21]
On remand, the Court of Appeals is free to consider whether there is other evidence that is sufficiently unambiguous to permit a trier of fact to find that petitioners conspired to price predatorily for two decades despite the absence of any apparent motive to do so. The evidence must "ten[d] to exclude the possibility" that petitioners underpriced respondents to compete for business, rather than to implement an economically Page 475 U. S. 598 senseless conspiracy. Monsanto, 465 U.S. at 465 U. S. 764. In the absence of such evidence, there is no "genuine issue for trial" under Rule 56(e), and petitioners are entitled to have summary judgment reinstated.
NUE's complaint alleges that petitioners' conspiracy began as early as 1960; the starting date used in Zenith's complaint is 1953. NUE Complaint ¦ 52; Zenith Complaint ¦ 39.
During the same period, the number of American firms manufacturing television sets declined from 19 to 13. 6 App. to Brief for Appellant in No. 81-2331 (CA3), p.1961a. This decline continued a trend that began at least by 1960, when petitioners' sales in the United States market were negligible. Ibid. See Zenith Complaint ¦¦ 35, 37.
It is indeed remarkable that the Court, in the face of the long and careful opinion of the Court of Appeals, reaches the result it does. The Court of Appeals faithfully followed the relevant precedents, including First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U. S. 253 (1968), and Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U. S. 752 (1984), and it kept firmly in mind the principle that proof of a conspiracy should not be fragmented, see Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U. S. 690, 370 U. S. 699 (1962). After surveying the massive record, including very Page 475 U. S. 599 significant evidence that the District Court erroneously had excluded, the Court of Appeals concluded that the evidence, taken as a whole, creates a genuine issue of fact whether petitioners engaged in a conspiracy in violation of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and § 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act. In my view, the Court of Appeals' opinion more than adequately supports this judgment.
"[T]he Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market. The court apparently did not consider whether it was as plausible to conclude Page 475 U. S. 600 that petitioners' price-cutting behavior was independent, and not conspiratorial."
In a similar vein, the Court summarizes Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., supra, as holding that "courts should not permit factfinders to infer conspiracies when such inferences are implausible. . . ." Ante at 475 U. S. 593. Such language suggests that a judge hearing a defendant's motion for summary judgment in an antitrust case should go beyond the traditional summary judgment inquiry and decide for himself whether the weight of the evidence favors the plaintiff. Cities Service and Monsanto do not stand for any such proposition. Each of those cases simply held that a particular piece of evidence, standing alone, was insufficiently probative to justify sending a case to the jury. [Footnote 2/1] These holdings in no way undermine Page 475 U. S. 601 the doctrine that all evidence must be construed in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment.
The DePodwin Report, on which the Court of Appeals relied along with other material, indicates that respondents were harmed in two ways that are independent of whether petitioners priced their products below "the level necessary to sell their products or . . . some appropriate measure of cost." Ibid. First, the Report explains that the price-raising scheme in Japan resulted in lower consumption of petitioners' goods in that country, and the exporting of more of petitioners' goods to this country, than would have occurred had prices in Japan been at the competitive level. Increasing Page 475 U. S. 602 exports to this country resulted in depressed prices here, which harmed respondents. [Footnote 2/2] Second, the DePodwin Report indicates that petitioners exchanged confidential proprietary information and entered into agreements such as the five-company rule with the goal of avoiding intragroup competition in the United States market. The Report explains that petitioners' restrictions on intragroup competition caused respondents to lose business that they would not have lost had petitioners competed with one another. [Footnote 2/3] Page 475 U. S. 603
The DePodwin Report alone creates a genuine factual issue regarding the harm to respondents caused by Japanese cartelization and by agreements restricting competition among petitioners in this country. No doubt the Court prefers its own economic theorizing to Dr. DePodwin's, but that is not a reason to deny the factfinder an opportunity to consider Dr. DePodwin's views on how petitioners' alleged collusion harmed respondents. [Footnote 2/4] Page 475 U. S. 604
The first claim of error is that the Third Circuit treated evidence regarding price-fixing in Japan and the so-called five-company rule and check-prices as "direct evidence' of a conspiracy that injured respondents." Ante at 475 U. S. 583 (citing In re Japanese Electronics Products Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 238, 304-305 (1983)). The passage from the Third Page 475 U. S. 605 Circuit's opinion in which the Court locates this alleged error makes what I consider to be a quite simple and correct observation, namely, that this case is distinguishable from traditional "conscious parallelism" cases in that there is direct evidence of concert of action among petitioners. Ibid. The Third Circuit did not, as the Court implies, jump unthinkingly from this observation to the conclusion that evidence regarding the five-company rule could support a finding of antitrust injury to respondents. [Footnote 2/5] The Third Circuit twice specifically noted that horizontal agreements allocating customers, though illegal, do not ordinarily injure competitors of the agreeing parties. Id. at 306, 310-311. However, after reviewing evidence of cartel activity in Japan, collusive establishment of dumping prices in this country, and long-term, below-cost sales, the Third Circuit held that a factfinder could reasonably conclude that the five-company rule was not a simple price-raising device:
The Court's second charge of error is that the Third Circuit was not sufficiently skeptical of respondents' allegation that petitioners engaged in predatory pricing conspiracy. But Page 475 U. S. 606 the Third Circuit is not required to engage in academic discussions about predation; it is required to decide whether respondents' evidence creates a genuine issue of material fact. The Third Circuit did its job, and remanding the case so that it can do the same job again is simply pointless.
723 F.2d at 282. In short, the Third Circuit found DePodwin's affidavit sufficient to create a genuine factual issue regarding the correctness of his conclusion that petitioners sold below cost over a long period of time. Having made this determination, the court saw no need -- nor do I -- to address the District Court's analysis point by point. The District Court's criticisms of DePodwin's Page 475 U. S. 607 methods are arguments that a factfinder should consider.