Opinion ID: 1929672
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: application of antitrust standing principles under associated general contractors

Text: The district court correctly dismissed appellants' Junkin Act claims for lack of standing for several reasons. First, appellants are not competitors in the allegedly affected market, which is the business of providing debit network processing services to merchants. Nor are appellants consumers of those services. Second, appellants allege injuries that are derivative and remote. They allege that the tying arrangements . . . have forced Merchants to accept [Visa and MasterCard brand debit cards] and pay fees which are supra-competitive. (Emphasis supplied.) Thus, they claim to have been injured only derivatively, because merchants allegedly raised the prices of all goods that they sold, thereby pass[ing] those prices on to consumers in the for[m] of artificially-inflated and advanced prices for goods. Appellants do not allege that they were injured directly, or even indirectly, by purchasing debit processing services in a chain of distribution. Appellants, instead, assert a derivative injury based on a theory that merchants passed on the cost of an alleged tying of debit processing services to increase the prices of thousands of unrelated retail goods the merchants sold to consumers such as appellants. Third, there are more directly injured parties. The alleged direct victims of Visa's and MasterCard's conductthe more than 4 million merchants nationwide that accepted Visa or MasterCardlitigated for years, and it is undisputed that they settled a class action challenging the very same tying alleged here. See In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, 297 F.Supp.2d 503 (E.D.N.Y.2003), affirmed sub nom. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 396 F.3d 96 (2d Cir. 2005), cert. denied 544 U.S. 1044, 125 S.Ct. 2277, 161 L.Ed.2d 1080. Denying appellants an antitrust remedy will not leave a significant antitrust violation undetected or unremedied. See Associated General Contractors v. Carpenters, 459 U.S. 519, 103 S.Ct. 897, 74 L.Ed.2d 723 (1983). Fourth, appellants' damages claims are speculative. Appellants do not and cannot allege that they overpaid for purchases of debit processing services from merchants. Instead, appellants assert that they paid an overcharge on every retail good that they purchased from every Nebraska merchant that accepted Visa or MasterCard, over the course of several years, regardless of the form of payment used to make their purchases. Like the claimed damages in Henke Enterprises, Inc. v. Hy-Vee Food Stores, 749 F.2d 488, 490 (8th Cir. 1984), the claimed price increases over a period of years could have resulted from myriad independent reasons unrelated to the alleged violation of the Junkin Act. Finally, appellants' claims pose a risk of a double recovery and would require a complex apportionment of damages. Visa and MasterCard settled with the nationwide merchant class for more than $3 billion, and appellants base their claims on the same alleged tying asserted in the merchants' class action. Appellants thus seek a recovery duplicative of the settlement sums that Visa and MasterCard are paying to Nebraska merchants. See, e.g., Ho v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 16 A.D.3d 256, 257, 793 N.Y.S.2d 8, 9 (2005) (defendants have been subjected to judicial remediation . . . and any recovery here would be duplicative). Moreover, apportioning damages would be a nightmare. Appellants' claims would require an apportionment of damages among each Nebraska merchant at which appellants shopped and among each item that each appellant purchased at each merchantan incredibly complex task. None of the factors from Associated General Contractors weigh in favor of concluding that appellants' claimed injury is the type intended to be protected by antitrust laws. We conclude that appellants lack standing under Associated General Contractors to seek recovery for Visa and MasterCard's alleged violation of the Junkin Act.