Opinion ID: 705929
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Retail Grocery Market

Text: 15 The district court determined that plaintiffs had presented enough evidence to permit a trier of fact to conclude that defendants had acted deliberately to prevent a competitor from occupying Jewel's rental space and that the absence of a grocery store anchor tenant was a significant cause of Grove Mall's decline. A private antitrust plaintiff, however, does not acquire standing merely by showing that he was injured by the defendant's conduct. In addition to establishing a link between the defendant's acts and the plaintiff's injuries, the Supreme Court has held that: 16 Plaintiffs must prove antitrust injury, which is to say injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants' acts unlawful. The injury should reflect the anticompetitive effect either of the violation or of anticompetitive acts made possible by the violation. It should, in short, be the type of loss that the claimed violations ... would be likely to cause. 17 Brunswick Corp., 429 U.S. at 489, 97 S.Ct. at 698 (citations omitted). This test focuses on the connection between the purpose of the antitrust laws (protecting market competition) and the alleged injury. When the plaintiff's injury is linked to the injury inflicted upon the market, such as when consumers pay higher prices because of a market monopoly or when a competitor is forced out of the market, the compensation of the injured party promotes the designated purpose of the antitrust law--the preservation of competition. 18 It is not contested that Mr. Serfecz brings this action neither as a consumer nor as a competitor in the retail grocery market, but as a lessor of rental space to competitors in this market. Suppliers to direct market participants typically cannot seek recovery under the antitrust laws because their injuries are too secondary and indirect to be considered antitrust injuries. Southwest Suburban Bd. of Realtors, Inc. v. Beverly Area Planning Ass'n, 830 F.2d 1374, 1379 (7th Cir.1987); see also Stamatakis Indus. v. King, 965 F.2d 469, 471 (7th Cir.1992) ([A] producer's loss is no concern of the antitrust laws, which protect consumers from suppliers rather than suppliers from each other.); Bodie-Rickett & Assocs. v. Mars, Inc., 957 F.2d 287, 290-91 (6th Cir.1992) (holding that injury to broker through loss of commission was not antitrust injury). In Southwest Suburban, a trade association that provided listing services to real estate brokerage firms alleged that the defendants conspired to boycott, and encouraged customers to boycott, the plaintiff's listing service. Consequently, the trade association was unable to provide a comprehensive listing of properties to its subscribers. The defendants allegedly had taken action directly against the trade association to reduce the value of its listing in order to exclude non-preferred brokers from the real estate brokerage services market. The court held, however, that the defendants' anti-competitive practice was directed at the members of the trade association, not the trade association itself, and that any injury to the trade association, as a supplier of listing services, was too remote from the antitrust violation to confer standing. Southwest Suburban, 830 F.2d at 1379. We believe that the plaintiffs are in a similar position to that trade association and are best characterized as suppliers to the market participants, retail grocery stores and grocery purchasers. 19 In Southaven Land Co. v. Malone & Hyde, Inc., 715 F.2d 1079 (6th Cir.1983), our colleagues in the Sixth Circuit held that an owner-lessor of retail commercial space did not have standing to maintain an antitrust action against a grocery store retailer who would not release its rental space to allow the plaintiff to lease the space to a different grocery store. The plaintiff claimed that the defendants intended to monopolize the retail grocery market by destroying the site as a location for the operation of a retail grocery outlet. The Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiff's injury (rental devaluation) as a supplier of retail space to direct participants in the retail grocery market was not sufficiently linked to the pro-competitive policy of the antitrust laws. Southaven, 715 F.2d at 1087; see also Rosenberg v. Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, 598 F.Supp. 642 (S.D.N.Y.1984) (holding that owner and developer of shopping mall alleging defendants conspired to keep it from opening a grocery store by filing state court lawsuits and preventing building permits from being issued lacked standing because developer was not a direct participant in the retail grocery market). 20 Here, the plaintiffs' injury is not the direct effect of the defendants' anticompetitive conduct. Assuming Jewel's goal was to gain control of the retail grocery market in Elk Grove, Illinois, we do not believe that the damages claimed by plaintiffs (devaluation of Grove Mall) present the type of anticompetitive injury that the antitrust laws were intended to remedy. See Sanner, 62 F.3d at 925-926 (7th Cir.1995). 21 Even if plaintiffs' injury could be characterized as an antitrust injury, this factor alone would not confer standing: From the class of injured persons suffering an 'antitrust injury' only those parties who can most efficiently vindicate the purposes of the antitrust laws have antitrust standing to maintain a private action under Sec. 4. In re Industrial Gas Antitrust Litig., 681 F.2d at 516. The 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 ... [particularly when denying standing] is not likely to leave a significant antitrust violation undetected or unremedied. Associated Gen. Contractors, 459 U.S. at 542, 103 S.Ct. at 911. Our decisions have recognized the need to balance the interests of deterrence through private antitrust enforcement and avoidance of excessive treble damages litigation. An appropriate balance is achieved by granting standing only to those who, as consumers or competitors, suffer immediate injuries with respect to their business or property, while excluding persons whose injuries were more indirectly caused by the antitrust conduct. In re Industrial Gas Antitrust Litig., 681 F.2d at 520. If the competing grocery stores have been precluded from the market and injured by defendants' actions, their injuries would be direct and they could maintain an antitrust action against the defendants. See Southwest Suburban, 830 F.2d at 1379-80; Southaven, 715 F.2d at 1086-87; In re Industrial Gas Antitrust Litig., 681 F.2d at 520. Similarly, grocery consumers could maintain an action if defendants' actions stifled competition allowing defendants to engage in monopoly pricing in the retail grocery market. 6 Suppliers of rental space to grocery retailers are not the proper parties to maintain an antitrust action with respect to the defendants' alleged monopolistic and anticompetitive activities in the retail grocery market. 7 In sum, we hold that these plaintiffs do not have the requisite direct injury to have standing to assert that Jewel has monopolized, or conspired with others to monopolize, the retail grocery market. We express no opinion on whether, in a suit brought by another plaintiff who can show the requisite direct injury, such allegations could be established.