Opinion ID: 805979
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: seo

Text: Finally, plaintiffs contend that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to SEO. Plaintiffs have offered evidence that on October 30, 2002, Tynkkynen met with Bernd Rettig, an SEO executive, and that during that meeting Tynkkynen and Rettig agreed that UPM would lead a price increase for publication paper in Europe, and that SEO would match that price increase. Plaintiffs assert that the success of SEO’s price-fixing efforts in Europe depended on its ability to 12 Although the record is not decisive in this respect, there is evidence that SENA and UPM each consistently attempted to implement the full amount of the February 2003 price increase when negotiating contracts with customers, reflecting the “seriously implement” aspect of the alleged agreement. For instance, Tynkkynen refused to allow UPM salespeople to enter into contracts with customers at prices below the full price increase amount, even when customers threatened to take their business elsewhere. There is also some evidence that SENA stood firm on the price increase despite customer resistance. 13 This Court has on at least one occasion mentioned other factors that may inform a court’s decision regarding disputed causation issues at summary judgment, see Williams v. Utica Coll. of Syracuse Univ., 453 F.3d 112, 121-22 (2d Cir. 2006); see also Williams v. KFC Nat’l Mgmt. Co., 391 F.3d 411, 422-25 (2d Cir. 2004) (Calabresi, J., concurring) (considering strength of evidence, relative knowledge of parties, and “how strongly we feel about making an error in one direction as against the other”). Such considerations have not been addressed by the parties, and we therefore do not address them further, although it appears that these factors favor plaintiffs here. 32 ensure that SENA and its rivals fixed the price of publication paper in the United States. Plaintiffs have failed, however, to offer any concrete evidence in support of their theory. For that reason, and because the record is devoid of evidence that SEO had any direct involvement in decisions regarding the marketing, sale, or pricing of publication paper in the United States, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to SEO.