Court Opinion

ID: 9448470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:36:47.65053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:26.640387
License: Public Domain

KALODNER, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I do not subscribe to the majority’s view that the Federal Trade Commission properly classified the “athletic goods industry” as a “relevant line' of commerce.” The Commission used too broad a brush and to wide a sweep in doing so. The product lines included by the Commission in the “athletic goods industry” range from baseballs, basketballs, footballs, golf balls, soccer balls, softballs, tennis balls, volley balls and badminton shuttlecocks to such diverse items as shoes, hip, kidney and shoulder pads, leg guards, golf clubs, football helmets, boxing gloves, masks, tennis racket frames, etc., etc. Numerous of the items mentioned have little in common in terms of physical characteristics, raw materials, manufacturing processes, end uses, pricing ór consumers.
Neither the Commission, nor the majority, has demonstrated, for example, how or why golf bags can be related to baseballs as a “relevant, line of commerce.”
*630There is just as much — or as little— affinity or community of relevance between the business of horse racing and automobile racing as there is between baseballs and golf bags. One cannot imagine classification of horse racing and automobile racing as a “relevant line of commerce.”
I concur, however, with the holding of my brethren that “there was substantial evidence before the Commission susceptible of the inferences validly drawn by it to justify it in finding that Spalding and Rawlings were engaged primarily in the production of athletic goods in the higher priced, higher quality categories, particularly with regard to baseballs, basketballs, footballs and softballs, constituting a separate and distinct line of commerce upon which the merger was to be measured.” On this score the record justifies the holding of the Commission that the effect of the acquisition by Spalding of Rawlings “may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly” in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act.