Opinion ID: 1094082
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Mississippi Antitrust Claims

Text: ¶ 30. Finally, Owens Corning asserts that Mississippi's antitrust statute expressly provides recovery for their indirect injuries. Owens Corning's theory is that if consumers had available a wider variety of products and the truthful information about the relative dangers of specific cigarette products, all of which would have been available in a competitive market in the absence of conspiratorial actions, smokers would have consumed cigarette products that, overall, were less harmful. Thus, Owens Corning claims that but for Tobacco Defendants' conspiracy, Owens Corning's damages would have been much less. Mississippi's antitrust law states: Any person, natural or artificial, injured or damaged by a trust and combine as herein defined, or by its effects direct or indirect, may recover all damages of every kind sustained by him or it and in addition a penalty of five hundred dollars ($500.00), by suit in any court of competent jurisdiction. Said suit may be brought against one or more of the parties to the trust or combine and one or more of the officers and representatives of any corporation a party to the same, or one or more of either. Such penalty may be recovered in each instance of injury. All recoveries herein provided for may be sued for in one suit. Miss.Code Ann. § 75-21-9 (Rev.2000). Owens Corning claims that considerations of remoteness are inapplicable here. Owens Corning adds that the remoteness doctrine has never been invoked in reference to an antitrust case. ¶ 31. Tobacco Defendants respond that since Owens Corning never smoked, purchased, or competed in the market for cigarettes, it cannot satisfy any of the basic requirements of injury and standing imposed by antitrust law. Tobacco Defendants cite a U.S. Supreme Court case, Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330, 339, 99 S.Ct. 2326, 60 L.Ed.2d 931 (1979), which states that as a threshold requirement, a plaintiff must plead and prove injury to its business or property; personal injuries, or financial losses which derive from personal injuries are excluded. They also find support in several of the previously cited federal courts of appeals cases which found for the tobacco companies against plaintiffs' antitrust claims. See Ass'n of Wash. Pub. Hosp. Dists., 241 F.3d at 705-06 (parallel business or property requirement in state statute barred financial claims based on smokers' personal injuries); Laborers Local, 191 F.3d at 241 (under parallel RICO business or property requirement, financial claims based on smoker's injuries are barred because smoker's injuries are personal in nature); Oregon Laborers, 185 F.3d at 968 (where state trade-practices act imposed parallel business or property requirement, claims based on smokers' injuries are barred because they are clearly predicated upon `personal injury'). ¶ 32. Additionally, Tobacco Defendants argue that an antitrust plaintiff must plead and prove that it suffered not just financial injury but  antitrust injuryinjury inflicted by the anti-competitive effects of the violation alleged. Antitrust injury is injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants' acts unlawful. Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 489, 97 S.Ct. 690, 50 L.Ed.2d 701 (1977). Antitrust injury is narrowly defined by the legislative purpose of preventing anticompetitive conducti.e., conduct that restrains the trade of buyers or sellers within a particular market. See Atlantic Richfield Co. v. USA Petroleum Co., 495 U.S. 328, 334, 110 S.Ct. 1884, 109 L.Ed.2d 333 (1990); Lake Hill Motors, Inc. v. Jim Bennett Yacht Sales, Inc., 246 F.3d 752, 756 n. 2 (5th Cir.2001). There has been no showing of antitrust injuries here.