Opinion ID: 626562
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Common Stimulus

Text: The district court also ruled that Anderson's presentation of a common economic stimulus, impelling an immediate market reaction, 732 F.Supp.2d at 401, made it impossible for Anderson to plead a viable § 1 claim. It stated that Anderson alleges facts suggesting that the Defendants merely responded to a common market stimulus created by Anderson itself, id. at 402, and that [h]aving proposed its pay-it-or else Surcharge, Anderson can not claim collusion in the Defendants' refusal to acquiesce to its self-destructive demand, id. at 401 (emphasis added). We have two difficulties with this reasoning. First, the court itself noted ( see Part II. C.3.a. above) that several of the defendants had initially entered into negotiations with Anderson for various alternatives to the Surcharge, and that some had reached agreement on such alternatives, see 732 F.Supp.2d at 397. The facts that there were various proposed alternatives to the Surchargeand that Anderson agreed to some of themundercut both the court's own view of the Surcharge as a take-it-or-leave-it demand by Anderson and the court's suggestion that the defendants also so viewed it. Second, the mere fact that an offer of goods or services at a given price may be nonnegotiable does not mean that the offerees, in responding to it, cannot violate the antitrust laws. Thus, the Twombly Court referred not simply to responses to given stimuli, but rather to  independent responses to common stimuli, or ... interdependence unaided by an advance understanding among the parties.  Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556 n. 4, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphases added). The presentation of a common economic offer may well lend itself to innocuous, independent, parallel responses; but it does not provide antitrust immunity to respondents who get together and agree that they will boycott the offeror. The latter is what the PAC alleged.