Opinion ID: 798173
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trial, First Appeal, and Craftsmen I

Text: 10 Craftsmen's claims against Ford and American Coach proceeded to a jury trial in 2002. The jury returned a verdict of favor of Craftsmen for more than $2 million in damages, which the district court tripled pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 15(a). Ford and American Coach appealed to this court, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to establish a conspiracy among them, Craftsmen I, 363 F.3d at 771, and that the district court erred in finding that the alleged restraint of trade constituted a per se antitrust violation. Id. at 772. We disagreed with the first contention and held that Craftsmen submitted evidence sufficient for a reasonable jury to conclude that Ford and American Coach acted through LIMO to exclude Craftsmen and other specialty coachbuilders from advertising in trade publications and participating in trade shows. Id. 11 We agreed with Ford and American Coach, however, that these actions did not amount to a per se violation of antitrust law. Id. at 772-76. We came to this conclusion because restrictions upon coachbuilders that had not submitted particular evidence that their products met certain safety standards are not necessarily anti-competitive: [T]he creation and enforcement of standards, including safety standards, often has pro-competitive effects. For example, having unsafe limousines in the market could tend to undercut consumer confidence in all limousines, and thereby decrease overall limousine sales. Id. at 774. In short, we found that the economic impact of safety standards is not immediately discernable. Id. Therefore, the case demanded a more thorough analysis than the abbreviated one employed by the district court to determine whether the restraint was unreasonable. Id. 12 We held that the district court should have instead applied the rule of reason to determine whether the actions of Ford and American Coach unreasonably restrained trade in the industry. Id. at 776. Under the rule of reason, the factfinder probes more deeply into the relevant circumstances to determine whether the actions at issue created an unreasonable restraint on competition. Id. at 772-73. Because this question was never posed to the jury, we remanded the case to the district court. Id. at 777. We also ruled that the testimony of Craftsmen's expert, David Cole, was inadmissible insofar as it purported to prove an antitrust violation or measure damages arising out of assumed anti-competitive conduct. Id. While Cole was qualified and provided expert testimony with regard to Craftsmen's damages, his testimony was not helpful to a jury in a rule-of-reason case because he assumed that Craftsmen's alleged lost growth from 1995 through 1998 was caused by [the] defendants' alleged conspiracy. He did not determine whether other factors ... may have affected Craftsmen's growth rate. Under the rule of reason analysis, which should have been applied in this case, such an analysis was required. Id.