Court Opinion

ID: 9852308
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:28:17.927353+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:25.349845
License: Public Domain

Hamilton, J.
(concurring in the dissent) — I concur in the result of the dissent. Without entering the grammatical and philosophical arenas so competently cultivated by the majority and dissenting opinions, it is my view that, when read in the context of RCW 19.90 as a whole, RCW 19.90.040 plausibly and naturally breaks down and should be read as follows:
“It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in business within this state
“[1] to sell any article or product at less than the cost thereof to such vendor,
“[2] or give away any article or product, for the purpose of injuring competitors or destroying competition,
“[3] or to use any article or product as a loss leader,’
“[4] or in connection with any sale to make or give, or to offer to make or give, any special or secret rebate, payment, allowance, refund, commission or unearned discount, whether in the form of money or otherwise,
“[5] or to secretly extend to certain purchasers special services or privileges not extended to all purchasers purchasing upon like terms and conditions,
“[6] or to make or enter into any collateral contract or device of any nature, whereby a sale below cost is effected, to the injury of a competitor, “and where the same destroys or tends to destroy competition.” (Italics mine.)
Injury to or destruction of competition, as the majority point out, is the touchstone of the Unfair Practices Act. Thus, only the final and conjunctive adverbial clause logically, and in keeping with the primary purpose of the act, modifies or qualifies the preceding disjunctive infinitive clauses. To hold, as the majority does, that each of the antecedent infinitive clauses (1 through 6), to which the adverbial clause “whereby a sale below cost is effected” may be intelligibly attached, is modified by such clause, is *859to render each such infinitive clause practically superfluous. The legislature could have accomplished the end result effected by the majority opinion by simply stopping at the end of clause 2.