Opinion ID: 471004
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Nature of the Injury: Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc.

Text: 28 The NFL contends that the injuries suffered by the Raiders and the Coliseum were not of a type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent, basing its argument upon Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 97 S.Ct. 690, 50 L.Ed.2d 701 (1977). There, the Court denied a treble damages cause of action to a group of bowling centers, for an alleged violation of section 7 of the Clayton Act. The bowling centers suffered economic harm when Brunswick acquired, and thereby facilitated the continued operation of, a number of their financially ailing competitors. After noting that plaintiffs were in essence complaining not that Brunswick had reduced competition, but that it had actually preserved it, the Court stated that recovery could be had only for injury that flows from that which makes defendants' acts unlawful and that reflect[s] the anticompetitive effect either of the violation or of anticompetitive acts made possible by the violation. Id. at 489, 97 S.Ct. at 697, quoted in Blue Shield v. McCready, 457 U.S. 465, 482, 102 S.Ct. 2540, 2550, 73 L.Ed.2d 149 (1982). We have stated that the Brunswick standard is satisfied on a showing that the injury was caused by a reduction, rather than an increase, in competition flowing from the defendant's acts. California Computer Products v. IBM, 613 F.2d 727, 732 (9th Cir.1979). 29 The NFL's basic contention is that appellees never proved that their injuries were caused by the restraint of competition which flowed from the antitrust violation in this case. This argument is a curious one, and is predicated upon an unduly narrow concept of competition. 30 The NFL apparently conceives of competition as something uniformly to be avoided by all rational business enterprises. The League seems to argue that the only losses of appellees which are compensable under Brunswick are those which require for their description some reference to the Los Angeles Rams, the other football team in the city to which the Raiders sought to relocate. Any losses merely attributable to the prevention of the relocation--attributable, that is, to the inability of the Raiders to operate in the desired regional market, and to the Coliseum's inability to lease its facility to the Raiders for their football games--supposedly do not constitute antitrust injury because, the NFL argues, they do not flow from the prevention of competition between the Raiders and the Rams. 31 We reject this effort by the NFL effort to restrict unduly the range of antitrust impact. Competition, in the business context, need not, and in fact usually does not, involve any measures which expressly acknowledge, let alone take aim at, other competitors. One competes in a market merely by operating an enterprise in it. Competition, therefore, is not always dreaded by business people; indeed, it is often avidly sought by those who do not yet operate in a potentially lucrative market. 32 Appellants are liable for antitrust damages because they restrained competition between NFL teams and among football stadia by restraining the Raiders attempt to move and operate in Los Angeles. Merely by operating there, the Raiders would have been competing with the Rams, and the Coliseum would have been able to bid effectively for a professional football team as its tenant. The restraint of this competition constitutes a sufficient basis for treble damages relief under Brunswick. 33 The NFL makes much of the fact that appellees' damages claims made no reference to the Rams or to the effect that the presence of the Rams would have upon appellees' income and expenses. But any evidence of lost profits implicitly accounted for the Rams, and the NFL should have introduced contrary evidence if it felt that the presence of the Rams rendered the Raiders' or Coliseum's figures inaccurate. Moreover, the less the Rams' presence influenced the amount of appellees' lost profits, the greater the indication that the football and stadium markets could have tolerated more freedom of movement for NFL teams and have functioned in an economically inefficient manner due to the territorial restrictions. 34 Finally, the NFL complains that the district court's jury instructions on this issue were insufficient. We disagree. The court expressly instructed the jury that the Raiders and the Coliseum could not recover damages unless they met their burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the injury was the result of a restriction in competition. Cf. Handgards, Inc. v. Ethicon, 743 F.2d 1282, 1296 (9th Cir.1984) (approved instruction that losses not recoverable if caused by increase in competition), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 963, 83 L.Ed.2d 968 (1985).