Court Opinion

ID: 9491347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:11:41.238431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:41.013576
License: Public Domain

*972HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring m part and dissenting in part
I agree with the majority that, as a matter of law, NPS failed to establish a violation of federal antitrust law. In my view, however, the district court erred by holding that as a matter of Iowa state law, J.B. Hunt did not have the predominant purpose of injuring or destroying NPS. There was more than sufficient evidence to present this issue to a jury. For this reason, I respectfully dissent.
Under the Iowa law of interference with prospective advantage, NPS was required to prove five elements as part of its prima facie ease: “(1) that it had a prospective contractual or business relationship; (2) that defendant knew of the prospective relationship; (3) that defendant intentionally and improperly interfered with the relationship; (4) that defendant’s interference caused the relationship to fail to materialize; and (5) the amount of the resulting damage.” Preferred Marketing Assocs. v. Hawkeye Nat’l Life Ins., 452 N.W.2d 389, 396 (Iowa 1990) (citation omitted). As the majority correctly points out, NPS was required further to show that J.B. Hunt’s predominant purpose was to injure or destroy NPS. In this regard, there remain genuine issues of material fact warranting a trial.
When NPS’s president, John Krusenstjer-na, met with J.B. Hunt’s manger, Donald Swanson, Swanson stated; “I’m not going to buy you. Why would I buy you? I’d just take you out.” Swanson also stated that Hunt decided to try and take NPS but of the zone-skipping market because “you were the easiest.” J.B. Hunt immediately targeted NPS’s most lucrative client, offered prices well below market costs, took a significant loss, and within a short time of Krusenstjer-na’s and Swanson’s meeting, NPS was forced to leave the zone-skipping market.
In Willey v. Riley, 541 N.W.2d 521, 527 (Iowa 1995), the Iowa Supreme Court stated that in order to demonstrate that a defendant’s predominant purpose was to injure or destroy the plaintiff, a plaintiff must present evidence of “intent” and that mere “Speculation ... is not evidence” warranting that a case be submitted to a jury. In this case, NPS presented evidence in the form of Swanson s statements to Krusenstjerna that J.B. Hunt had the intent to take NPS out of the market. Rather than NPS merely speculating that this was the case, Swanson said as much to Krusenstjerna. Coupled with this intent, J.B. Hunt’s subsequent conduct certainly raises genuine issues of material fact as to its predominant purpose.
The majority’s correct resolution of the federal claim should not confuse the issue of the state law claim. In Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209, 118 S.Ct. 2578, 125 L.Ed.2d 168 (1993), the United States Supreme Court stated:
Even an act of pure malice by one business competitor against another does not, without more, state a claim under the federal antitrust laws; those laws do not create a federal law of unfair competition or “purport to afford remedies for all torts committed by or against persons engaged in interstate commerce.”
Id. at 225, 113 S.Ct. 2578 (quoting Hunt v. Crumboch, 325 U.S. 821, 826, 65 S.Ct. 1545, 89 L.Ed. 1954 (1945) (emphasis added)). Because there are genuine issues of material fact, a jury should determine whether J.B. Hunt committed a tort. In short, I would reverse on the state law claim and remand this case to the district court. On remand, the district court could retain jurisdiction over the case, see 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a), or exercise its discretion in dismissing the claim without prejudice. See id. §§ 1367(c), 1367(d).