Opinion ID: 330248
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The divestiture order.

Text: 87 Since we are granting a new trial the district court may again be asked to consider whether divestiture is a remedy available to a private plaintiff under § 16 of the Clayton Act. The authorities on that issue differ. 17 Until the Ninth Circuit's recent opinion in International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. v. General Telephone & Electronics Corp., 518 F.2d 913 (9th Cir. 1975), no court had made any real effort to analyze the problem in terms of congressional intention. The Ninth Circuit opinion makes an exhaustive analysis of the available legislative history and concludes, learned commentary to the contrary notwithstanding, 18 that Congress did not intend to create a private divestiture remedy when it enacted the injunctive relief provision of § 16. 88 No third Circuit opinion enlightens us on this problem. We have independently reviewed the available legislative history referred to in Judge Goodwin's extended opinion in International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. v. General Telephone & Electronics Corp., supra. We agree that it supports his conclusion that many members of the Senate and House Committees which considered the problem in the Sixty-third Congress assumed that § 16 did not create a private divestiture remedy. We will not burden this opinion with a repetition of Judge Goodwin's analysis. 89 It is quite another question whether legislative history from 1914, strong as it appears, should control the contemporary application of a statute laying down a fundamental national economic policy. This is especially true when the significance of the circumstances to which application is sought were perceived dimly, if at all, at the time of passage. The antitrust laws are of necessity statements of general principle. They must be given meaning in specific applications on a case-by-case basis. It is impossible for a legislature to devise codes so all-encompassing as to predict every case to which the general principle should apply. So, too, with antitrust remedies. There is a danger in permitting the pronouncements of statesmen long deceased to control the contemporary meaning of statutes which are almost an economic constitution for our complex national economy. 90 But we need not, in this case, decide a rule of general application with respect to the availability of divestiture relief under § 16. Even if such a private remedy is available, it would in our view be inappropriate because less drastic relief will provide sufficient redress. 91 It must be recalled that we are dealing with three specific geographic markets, and thus with three separate problems of relief. The focus of the remedy, then, must be on what can be accomplished to overcome the threat to competition in those specific markets. If the suit had been commenced at a time when the court might have prevented the acquisitions by Brunswick or any other deep pocket owner, and if it had done so, one of two things might have happened. Brunswick might have allowed the bowling centers to close, and would thereby have eliminated any § 4 injury to plaintiffs' property or business. Alternatively, Brunswick might have found another purchaser whose presence in the market would have retained the same level of competition. The injury to Treadway's property or business at least on this record would have been the same, but there would have been no § 7 violation on which to predicate either a § 4 or a § 16 action. At this late stage, ten years after the acquisition, divestiture of going, thriving bowling centers to other purchasers will not change the competitive picture. By now the formerly threatened businesses have survived. 92 An alternative to a sale, of course, would be to dismantle the centers. But at this time such a procedure would merely reduce competition artificially in the three markets to the detriment of the public. If this had been a merger between competitors so that its effect would almost inevitably have been anticompetitive, divestiture, if authorized, might have been appropriate. But where the § 7 violation is by a new entrant purchasing an existing competitor in an existing market, relief should be restricted to preventing those practices by which a deep pocket market entrant harms competition. Otherwise what is intended as a shield for small competitors becomes a sword against the consumer. Given the type of § 7 violation which plaintiffs alleged and attempted to prove, divestiture was simply inappropriate.