Opinion ID: 2087240
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: agc

Text: The district court correctly recognized that AGC factors (2) (whether the injury alleged is direct or indirect) and (3) (whether there are more directly injured plaintiffs with motivation to sue) cannot apply in Minnesota because indirect purchasers are explicitly vested with a cause of action under Minn.Stat. § 325D.57. The district court's application of AGC factors (1) (whether the plaintiff is a consumer or competitor in the allegedly restrained market) and (5) (whether the plaintiff's claims risk duplicative recoveries and would require a complex apportionment of damages), however, was misplaced. For one thing, none of the AGC factors was intended to be determinative, even under the more restrictive boundaries of federal antitrust standing. The district court, nevertheless, turned AGC factors (1) and (5) into absolute requirements for standing under Minnesota antitrust law by stating that an antitrust plaintiff must be either a consumer or a customer in the particular industry and there must be neither speculative damages nor risk of duplicative recoveries. The rule espoused by the district court is contrary to the Supreme Court's acknowledgement that `it is simply not possible to fashion an across-the-board and easily applied standing rule which can serve as a tool of decision for every case,' AGC, 459 U.S. at 536 n. 33, 103 S.Ct. 897 quoting Sherman, Antitrust Standing: From Loeb to Malamud, 51 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 374, 407 (1976), and makes Minnesota antitrust standing more restrictive than federal antitrust standing, in contravention of the 1984 amendment to Minn.Stat. § 325D.57. Even viewed as guideposts rather than requirements, the AGC factors are not harmonious with our antitrust law. For example the first part of AGC factor (5) (complexity of apportionment and risk of duplicative recoveries) was at the heart of Illinois Brick's bar to indirect purchaser suits. Illinois Brick explained that an indirect purchaser suit is, by nature, complicated and uncertain: [t]he demonstration of how much of the overcharge was passed on by the first purchaser must be repeated at each point at which the price-fixed goods changed hands before they reached the plaintiff. 431 U.S. at 732-33, 97 S.Ct. 2061. By expressly permitting indirect purchaser suits, our legislature has rejected the notion that Minnesota courts are not to be burdened with the complex apportionment inherent in those suits. With regard to the risk of duplicative recoveries under AGC factor (5), section 325D.57 allows a court to take any steps necessary to avoid duplicative recovery against a defendant in a subsequent action arising from the same conduct. To the extent that our courts cannot ameliorate the risk of duplicative recovery, as where parallel proceedings in federal courts or courts in other states may result in later awards based on the same injuries, this risk is inherent in the dual system of private antitrust enforcement created by Illinois Brick and California v. ARC America Corp., 490 U.S. 93, 101, 109 S.Ct. 1661, 104 L.Ed.2d 86 (1989) (holding that federal antitrust law's bar to indirect purchaser suits does not preempt state courts from entertaining such suits). See Report of the Indirect Purchaser Task Force, 63 Antitrust L.J. 993, 994 (Spring 1995) (concluding that the current system of antitrust enforcement creates the risk that the full amount of an anticompetitive overcharge, trebled, will be recovered by direct purchasers under federal law and indirect purchasers at every successive stage of distribution under state law). While this risk is a legitimate and important consideration, it is not a risk that our court may remedy by restricting Minnesota antitrust law in ways that our legislature has not. As for AGC factor (1), the AGC Court noted that the plaintiff labor union was neither a consumer nor a competitor in the market in which trade was restrained only to highlight that the union may have suffered no injury at allbecause it was not clear whether the Union's interests would be served or disserved by enhanced competition in the market, 459 U.S. at 539, 103 S.Ct. 897  and to highlight that any injury suffered was not related to the Sherman Act's central interest in protecting the economic freedom of participants in the relevant market. Id. at 538, 103 S.Ct. 897. AGC did not make a plaintiff's status as a consumer or competitor in the restrained market a sine qua non of antitrust standing. Rather, AGC used that status as a tool to compare the plaintiff's alleged injury to the goals of antitrust law. While Minnesota courts should analyze an alleged injury's relation to the goals of antitrust law by identifying the markets involved, the market analysis is not the focus of the standing inquiry. AGC factor (4), whether the damages claims are speculative, is relevant to standing under the Minnesota antitrust law. As we explain below, we conclude that at this stage of litigation Lorix's damage claims are not so speculative as to place her outside the protection of Minnesota antitrust law. It is true, as Crompton notes, that the question of which persons have been injured by an illegal overcharge    is analytically distinct from the question of which persons have sustained injuries too remote to give them standing and that Illinois Brick addressed the scope of antitrust injury, not standing, under the Clayton Act. Illinois Brick, 431 U.S. at 728 n. 7, 97 S.Ct. 2061. Crompton urges, therefore, that the 1984 amendment to Minn. Stat. § 325D.57, as a response to Illinois Brick, has no effect on our standing analysis and that we must apply AGC. We do not agree. AGC was informed by Illinois Brick and repeated, as antitrust standing guidelines, Illinois Brick's reservations about indirect purchaser suits. In Illinois Brick    we held that treble damages could not be recovered by indirect purchasers   . The same concerns should guide us in determining whether the Union is a proper plaintiff under § 4 of the Clayton Act. AGC, 459 U.S. at 544, 103 S.Ct. 897 (emphasis added). We do not believe that the legislature repudiated Illinois Brick and invited indirect purchaser suits only for courts to dismiss those suits on the pleadings based on the very concerns that motivated Illinois Brick. We recognize that some state courts have applied the AGC factors to state antitrust claims. See, e.g., Kanne v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 272 Neb. 489, 723 N.W.2d 293, 297-301 (2006) (holding that the Nebraska Antitrust Act required the court to follow federal courts' construction of the Clayton Act); Fucile v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., No. 51560-03 CNC, 2004 WL 3030037, at  (Vt.Super.Ct. Dec. 27, 2004) (applying AGC factors). Other courts do not apply the AGC factors. See, e.g., Moniz, 484 F.Supp.2d at 231 (denying defendants' motion to dismiss in a state indirect purchasers class action and stating that defendants' reliance on AGC was inapposite). We will often look to case law from other states for guidance when our own jurisprudence is undefined. Gordon v. Microsoft Corp., 645 N.W.2d 393, 402 n. 9 (Minn.2002). But we conclude that our jurisprudence in this area is sufficient and, with due respect to courts that have chosen to apply AGC, we believe application of the AGC factors in Minnesota would contravene the plain language of the statute and in some cases thwart the intent of the legislature by barring indirect purchaser suits for the reasons articulated in Illinois Brick.