Opinion ID: 495447
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Proprietary Standing

Text: 11 As a part of its trade association activities, SSBR maintains a Multiple Listing Service (MLS), a comprehensive, computerized listing of real estate properties for sale in the south suburban communities of Chicago, including the Beverly Hills/Morgan Park neighborhoods. SSBR charges a substantial initiation and annual fee to members who desire to participate in the MLS. The complaint alleges that the defendants have conspired and agreed to boycott the MLS by refusing to list any of their properties with SSBR. Furthermore, the defendants have allegedly urged consumers to boycott the MLS as well. As a result of these activities, SSBR contends that it has been directly injured in its business or property since the MLS is no longer a useful marketing tool in the relevant market area. 12 We must first determine whether the alleged injury sustained by SSBR is of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent. Brunswick, 429 U.S. at 489, 97 S.Ct. at 697. The antitrust laws are of course for the benefit of competition, not competitors. Id. at 488, 97 S.Ct. at 697 (quoting Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U.S. 294, 320, 82 S.Ct. 1502, 1521, 8 L.Ed.2d 510); Ball Memorial Hosp., Inc. v. Mutual Hosp. Ins., Inc., 784 F.2d 1325, 1338 (7th Cir.1986). In Associated General Contractors, the Supreme Court explained that the Sherman Act was enacted to assure customers the benefits of price competition, and our prior cases have emphasized the central interest in protecting the economic freedom of participants in the relevant market. 459 U.S. at 538, 103 S.Ct. at 908; see also Ball Memorial Hosp., 784 F.2d at 1338 (The antitrust laws protect efficient production for the benefit of consumers.); Fishman v. Estate of Wirtz, 807 F.2d 520, 566 (7th Cir.1986) (dissenting opinion). As set out in the complaint, the relevant market is the provision of real estate brokerage services in the two neighborhoods at issue, not the provision of listing services to brokerage firms. SSBR is simply not a participant in this market; it does not supply real estate brokerage services nor does it purchase such services. Rather it merely supplies firms in the relevant market with a computerized listing service. 13 Moreover, the alleged anticompetitive practices of the defendants were directed not at SSBR as an entity but at its member brokers. The complaint maintains that the defendants' intent was to exclude non-preferred brokers from the brokerage services market in Beverly Hills and Morgan Park. To make it more difficult for the non-preferred brokers to compete effectively, the defendants allegedly conspired and agreed not to list properties with SSBR so that it could no longer offer a comprehensive listing service to those brokers. In Bichan, this Court recognized that as a general rule suppliers of an injured customer may not seek recovery under the antitrust laws because their injuries are too indirect, secondary, or remote. 681 F.2d at 519-520. Of course the injury to SSBR as a supplier is slightly more subtle than the usual case where the supplier's injury takes the form of reduced demand for its goods or services due to the customer's weakened market position. Here the complaint alleges that the defendants took direct action against the supplier (SSBR) to reduce the value of its product (the MLS) to their competitors. Nevertheless, any injury which SSBR sustained by virtue of the defendants' alleged boycott of the MLS was only indirectly related and incidental to the anticompetitive scheme, the intent and effect of which was allegedly to gain control of the real estate brokerage services market in Beverly Hills and Morgan Park and thereby exclude SSBR member brokers. 14 Finally, if the non-preferred brokers have in fact been injured by the defendants' anticompetitive activities, their injuries would be direct and, as we will discuss infra in connection with Regan Corporation, they would have a right to maintain their own antitrust actions against the defendants. As the Supreme Court indicated in Associated General Contractors, 459 U.S. at 542, 103 S.Ct. at 910, [t]he existence of an identifiable class of persons whose self-interest would normally motivate them to vindicate the public interest in antitrust enforcement diminishes the justification for allowing a more remote party ... to perform the office of a private attorney general. Consequently, our conclusion that SSBR has suffered no antitrust injury and hence may not maintain an antitrust action under Sec. 4 of the Clayton Act is not likely to leave a significant antitrust violation undetected or unremedied. Id.