Court Opinion

ID: 9640611
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:09:48.676227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:07.989978
License: Public Domain

SANBORN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I agree that the evidence was insufficient to justify the conclusion that there was no difference between the special gloves and the regular gloves offered by the defendant to the trade and the conclusion that the defendant had offered the special gloves solely to the customers of the plaintiff or in the territory where they would do the plaintiff the most harm, and not to the trade generally. However, I think the judgment should be reversed only because of the insufficiency of the evidence to establish territorial discrimination. Had that been established, then I think that the jury might have found from the evidence that the differences between the specials and the regulars were so insubstantial as to indicate that the specials were being offered to a portion of the trade for the purpose of injuring tlie plaintiff’s business and thus lessening competition. While circumstances established by the evidence create a strong suspicion that the defendant may have put out these special gloves for the purpose of injuring the plaintiff’s business, as the plaintiff believes, they are not necessarily inconsistent with a hypothesis that these special gloves were offered generally to the trade, and, if they were so offered, then, even though the differences were slight, there was no violation of the Clayton Act, since all purchasers had the opportunity to purchase the same gloves at the same price. The vital defect in the plaintiff’s case, as I see it, is in its failure to take the question of territorial discrimination out of the realm of speculation and conjecture. I therefore concur.