Opinion ID: 3011263
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the casual connection between defendant's

Text: wrongdoing and plaintiff 's harm; (2) the specific intent of defendant to harm plaintiff; (3) the nature of plaintiff 's alleged injury (and whether it relates to the purposes of the antitrust laws, i.e., ensuring competition within economic markets); (4) the directness or indirectness of the asserted injury; (5) whether the damages claim is . . . highly speculative; and (6) keeping the scope of complex antitrust trials within judicially manageable limits, i.e., avoiding either the risk of duplicate recoveries on the one hand, or the danger of complex apportionment of damages on the other. Steamfitters, 171 F.3d at 924 (quoting AGC, 459 U.S. at 537-38, 540, 542-44). Steamfitters applied these factors to the union funds' antitrust claims, and found that, while the funds satisfied factors one through three, the indirectness of the funds' injuries and their highly speculative damage claims, subsumed under the principle of remoteness, overwhelmingly showed the lack of proximate cause. Here, the District Court used the same analysis, and held that the alleged conspiracy did not proximately cause the Hospitals' injuries. The Hospitals argue that the District Court misapplied Steamfitters. The Tobacco Companies disagree. We now evaluate these arguments through an independent examination of the AGC factors. (1) Factor 1: Causal Connection There is a causal connection between the Tobacco Companies' alleged conspiracy and the Hospitals' injuries 16 -- i.e., but-for that alleged conspiracy, the injuries would not have arisen. This supports a finding of proximate cause. Yet, while a causal connection is necessary for a finding of proximate cause, it is not sufficient by itself. See Steamfitters, 171 F.3d at 925.