Opinion ID: 392844
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Impact on Plaintiffs' Business

Text: 30 Section 4 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 15 (1976), provides that any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor ... and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained. To prevail in an antitrust action, a plaintiff must show both an injury to his business resulting from the defendants' wrongful actions, and some indication of the amount of the damage done. See Terrell v. Household Goods Carriers' Bureau, 494 F.2d 16, 20 (5th Cir. 1974). These two elements of impact may be characterized as fact of damage and measure of damage. 31 As to the former element, defendants contend that plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proving the fact of damage with certainty. Certainty, however, was not the burden of persuasion that plaintiffs had to meet. To satisfy the first element of impact, plaintiffs had only to persuade the jury by a preponderance of the evidence that defendants' price fixing conspiracy injured them in their business or property. E. g., Gainesville Utilities Dept. v. Florida Power & Light Co., 573 F.2d at 294 n.3, 304-05. 32 Fact of damage is a question of the sufficiency of the evidence. Terrell v. Household Goods Carriers' Bureau, 494 F.2d at 20. Where, as here, plaintiffs prove a statutory violation in the form of a price fixing conspiracy with respect to a homogeneous or fungible product that was marketed in a similar manner throughout the country, it is not unlikely that plaintiffs also will be able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that purchasers of the product in question were injured in their property or business. See Alabama v. Blue Bird Body Co., 573 F.2d 309, 324 (5th Cir. 1978). Indeed, an independent review of the record before us reveals substantial evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that present plaintiffs were thusly injured when they purchased softwood plywood from these defendants and their co-conspirators. Plaintiffs' expert economic witness so testified at trial, in contraposition to the testimony of defendants' expert witness. The jury accepted the credibility of the former and rejected that of the latter. We find no basis for disturbing the jury's verdict on appeal. 33 Defendants also argue that there was insufficient evidence to support plaintiffs' claimed measure of damages, i. e., the amount of phantom freight and underweights paid by plaintiffs to defendants. We disagree. As we recently held in Malcolm v. Marathon Oil Co., 642 F.2d 845, 858 (5th Cir. 1981), once anti-trust plaintiffs have proved the fact of damage, their burden on proving the measure of damages becomes lighter. The amount of damage may be shown by just and reasonable inference with juries voting upon the probable and inferential as well as upon direct and positive proof. Id. (citing Terrell v. Household Goods Carriers' Bureau, 494 F.2d at 23-24). In fact, given proof of the fact of damage, proof of losses which border on the speculative is allowed in order to facilitate the policy of the anti-trust laws. Id. (citing Hobart Bros. Co. v. Malcolm T. Gilliland, Inc., 471 F.2d 894, 903 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 923, 93 S.Ct. 2736, 37 L.Ed.2d 150 (1973)). 34 Plaintiffs' expert witness testified that if competition had been at work in the plywood industry during the damage period, it would have eliminated the ability of defendant plywood manufacturers to realize additional revenue in the amount of the phantom freight charged on the sale of southern plywood. Likewise, plaintiffs' economist testified that the effect of the conspiratorial use of underweights in the delivered pricing of western plywood was to increase the price paid by buyers by the amount of those underweights. The jury chose to accept the testimony of plaintiffs' economist and to reject the contrary testimony of defendants' economist. Based on the evidence in the record before us, we cannot say that it was unjust or unreasonable for the jury to so conclude. Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, 327 U.S. 251, 264-65, 66 S.Ct. 574, 579, 90 L.Ed. 652 (1946). 35 Finally, defendants argue that it was reversible error for the district court even to submit the question of measure of damage, as distinct from that of fact of damage, to the jury. In its pretrial order of March 27, 1978, the district court advised all parties that trial was set for October 16, 1978, over one-half year later, upon all issues except the following, which are severed for subsequent trial as appropriate: (1) amount of damages sustained by individual plaintiffs, intervenors, and class members. Plaintiffs went to trial contending that the alleged conspiracy caused them injury in the form of overcharges for phantom freight and underweights. Defendants tried to convince the jury that their pricing system caused no economic injury to anyone. The jury, agreeing with plaintiffs and disagreeing with defendants, returned its special verdict upholding plaintiffs' theory. Having failed to persuade the first jury that their challenged practices caused damage to no one, defendants now seek the opportunity to convince a different jury that some other measure of damages is appropriate. 36 This court has already established the principle that, in a bifurcated proceeding, the issue or issues to be tried separately in the second trial must be so distinct and separable from the others that a trial of it or them alone may be had without injustice. Such a rule is dictated for the very practical reason that if separate juries are allowed to pass on issues involving overlapping legal and factual questions the verdicts rendered by each jury could be inconsistent. Alabama v. Blue Bird Body Co., 573 F.2d at 318. See Gasoline Products Co. v. Champlin Refining Co., 283 U.S. 494, 51 S.Ct. 513, 75 L.Ed. 1188 (1931); Swofford v. B & W, Inc., 336 F.2d 406 (5th Cir. 1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 962, 85 S.Ct. 653, 13 L.Ed.2d 557 (1965). 37 In reaching a decision on plaintiffs' theory of injury, the jury necessarily had to resolve plaintiffs' claim that defendant manufacturers' addition of west coast freight to the selling price of southern pine plywood shipped from southern mills, and their use of standard weights in the pricing of western fir plywood, increased those prices. Allowing a second jury to consider some alternative measure of damage preferred by defendants would unavoidably involve reconsideration of those issues, an outcome impermissible under Blue Bird. At present, the issue remaining before the district court involves only the mathematical computations that must be performed upon the transactional details of the individual purchasers and purchases. Resolution of those issues, whether by jury, court, or stipulation, will not implicate the integrity of the original jury verdict. We find no error in the district court's bifurcation procedure or in its submission to the jury of the measure of damage. Cf. In re Corrugated Container Antitrust Litigation, 1980-81 Trade Cas. (CCH) P 63,669 (S.D.Tex.1980) (jury permitted to determine liability, impact, and measure of damage, with exact dollar amounts of damage awards to be computed later). 38