Opinion ID: 495447
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: James Regan

Text: 8 The amended complaint does not allege any injury suffered by plaintiff James Regan that is separate and distinct from that suffered by plaintiff Regan Corporation as a result of the defendants' alleged efforts to prevent non-preferred brokers from providing real estate brokerage services to prospective buyers and sellers in the Beverly Hills/Morgan Park area. Clearly Regan Corporation, and not James Regan individually, was the target of any anticompetitive practices. While James Regan may in fact have suffered some injury as a result of the alleged antitrust violation, presumably in the form of reduced salary, commissions, or other employment benefits due to the corporation's weakened competitive position, such injury was merely derivative of the injury suffered by the corporation itself. 9 Merely derivative injuries sustained by employees, officers, stockholders, and creditors of an injured company do not constitute antitrust injury sufficient to confer antitrust standing. See Associated General Contractors v. California State Council of Carpenters, 459 U.S. 519, 533-535 and 541 n. 46, 103 S.Ct. 897, 906-907, and 910 n. 46, 74 L.Ed.2d 723; Blue Shield of Virginia v. McCready, 457 U.S. 465, 477, 102 S.Ct. 2540, 2547, 73 L.Ed.2d 149 (Congress did not intend to allow every person tangentially affected by an antitrust violation to maintain an action to recover threefold damages for the injury to his business or property); Eagle v. Star-Kist Foods, Inc., 812 F.2d 538, 541-542 (9th Cir.1987); National Independent Theatre Exhibitors, Inc. v. Buena Vista Distribution Co., 748 F.2d 602, 608 (11th Cir.1984) (Neither an officer nor an employee of a corporation has standing to bring an action in his own right for an antitrust violation causing injury to the corporation and its business.), certiorari denied, 471 U.S. 1056, 105 S.Ct. 2120, 85 L.Ed.2d 484; In re Industrial Gas Antitrust Litigation (Bichan), 681 F.2d 514, 519-520 (7th Cir.1982), certiorari denied, 460 U.S. 1016, 103 S.Ct. 1261, 75 L.Ed.2d 487; Jeffrey v. Southwestern Bell, 518 F.2d 1129, 1131 (5th Cir.1975); Loeb v. Eastman Kodak Co., 183 F. 704, 709 (3d Cir.1910) (injury to creditor and stockholder of injured corporation too indirect, remote, and consequential to permit them to maintain an antitrust action to recover treble damages). As an officer of Regan Corporation sustaining only derivative injury, James Regan lacks standing to maintain the present antitrust action against defendants.