Court Opinion

ID: 9473860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:41:22.65007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:46.094433
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
After a lengthy trial, a corporation found guilty of bid rigging escapes just punishment on grounds that the trial court erred in instructing the jury. I must dissent. A reading of the instructions as a whole discloses no error at all, for the experienced and able trial judge fully explained the interstate commerce element necessary to convict.
1) The recitations of the indictment indicated the necessity for proof of conduct restraining interstate commerce. The trial court instructed, with regard to the indictment:
In Count One the defendants are charged with having engaged, from sometime in or about May, 1979 to about September, 1980 in a combination and conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of certain interstate trade and commerce * * *.
2) The court explicitly stated that, as one element of the offense charged, the conspiracy must affect interstate commerce:
Three elements are required to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in order to establish the offense of conspiracy charged in the indictment.
Sfc * sN # Sfc
Third, that the conspiracy * * * either affected interstate commerce or occurred within the flow of interstate commerce.
3) Finally, the court gave the jury a detailed definition of “interstate commerce”:
The Sherman Act is not applicable unless it is first established that there is a restraint or attempted restraint of interstate commerce. Before you can find the defendant guilty, you must find beyond a reasonable doubt that there was such an actual or attempted restraint. You may so find when the allegedly illegal conduct, as charged in the indictment, has a direct impact on goods moving in interstate commerce — which means across state lines — or on goods which are in the flow of commerce — as when the goods are in the state of origin awaiting interstate shipment or in the state of destination on the way to the final consumer.
After giving the above instructions, the court gave the instruction challenged here. The instruction in question was merely part of the court’s definition of an “unreasonable” restraint:
To restrain interstate commerce means to interfere unreasonably with the ordinary, usual and freely competitive pricing or distribution system of the open market in interstate trde [sic] and commerce.
* sfc * * * *
The government’s burden is satisfied by a showing that the defendant’s business activities substantially affected interstate commerce.
Certain types of conduct are regarded as unreasonable per se. This means that the mere doing of the act itself constitutes an unreasonable restraint on interstate commerce, and it is not necessary to consider why the acts were committed, or their effect on the industry, or any other explanatory matter. Conduct regarded as unreasonable per se includes price fixing, division of markets and bid rigging.
(Emphasis added).
We must consider the instructions as a whole, not in isolation, in determining whether a trial court erred. United States v. Park, 421 U.S. 658, 674-75, 95 S.Ct. 1903, 1912-13, 44 L.Ed.2d 489 (1975); Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 146-47, 94 S.Ct. 396, 400-01, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973); Aimor Electric Works, Ltd. v. Omaha National Bank, 727 F.2d 688, 691 (8th Cir.1984). Here, reading the instructions as a whole demonstrates their propriety. The trial court explained first that the Sherman Act did not apply without a restraint or attempt to restrain interstate commerce. *1306The court then explained that the restraint had to be unreasonable, and that certain types of restraints were unreasonable per se. Under these instructions, the jury had to find that the defendant’s business was in interstate commerce before it considered the per se instruction.
Because I do not find error, much less prejudicial error in the instructions, I would affirm.