Court Opinion

ID: 9676145
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:16:00.459583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:44.640325
License: Public Domain

GONZALEZ, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the Court’s opinion and judgment. I write separately to articulate additional reasons why I believe the judgment is correct. The court of appeals held that the retail buyers of infant formula stated “causes of action for unconscionable price disparity and taking advantage of plaintiffs lack of capacity, knowledge, and experience to a grossly unfair degree.” 873 S.W.2d 399, 408. However, the intervenors’ allegations are primarily antitrust claims, which are not cognizable under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA), Tex. Bus. & Com.Code §§ 17.41-17.63.
In 1973, due in large part to the leadership of then Attorney General John L. Hill, the Texas Legislature passed the DTPA The Act’s stated purpose is to “protect consumers against false, misleading, and deceptive business practices, unconscionable actions, and breaches of warranty and to provide efficient and economical procedures to secure such protection.” Id. § 17.44.
A decade later, the Legislature modified existing state antitrust laws when it enacted the Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act of 1983. Id. §§ 15.01-15.40. In subsections 15.05(a)-(e) of the Antitrust Act, the Legislature largely incorporated federal anti-monopoly and anti-combination language from sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Trust Act and from sections 3, 6, and 7 of the Clayton Act. Tex.Bus. & Com.Code § 15.05(a) — (e); see 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2, 14, 17, 18. In passing the new Antitrust Act, the Legislature stated that its purpose was to “maintain and promote economic competition in trade and commerce occurring wholly or partly within the State of Texas and to provide the benefits of that competition to consumers in the state.” TexJBus. & Com.Code § 15.04. This section further provides, “The provisions of this Act shall be construed to accomplish this purpose and shall be construed in harmony with federal judicial interpretations of comparable federal antitrust statutes to the extent consistent with this purpose.” Id. (emphasis added). Therefore, the Legislature’s mandate that Texas antitrust law be harmonized with federal antitrust law necessarily constrains this Court. See Caller-Times Publishing Co. v. Triad Communications, Inc., 826 S.W.2d 576, 580-81 (Tex.1992).
In determining whether the intervenors may maintain a DTPA cause of action for the same conduct that would not be actionable under the antitrust laws, we look to federal ease law and policy for guidance. I conclude that to allow the intervenors to pursue a cause of action under the DTPA on grounds which would not support a claim under the Antitrust Act is to create a loophole. Allowing a claim under the DTPA that state and federal antitrust law would bar can only subvert legislative intent.
In Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720, 746-47, 97 S.Ct. 2061, 2074-75, 52 L.Ed.2d 707 (1977), the United States Supreme Court noted that direct purchasers alone have standing to maintain causes of action for injuries caused by violators of federal antitrust laws. Only direct purchasers may enforce antitrust laws and collect damages to the full extent of their injuries. Id. at 746, 97 S.Ct. at 2074-75 (reiterating the rule of Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe Mach. Corp., 392 U.S. 481, 494, 88 S.Ct. 2224, 2232, 20 L.Ed.2d 1231 (1968)). A direct pur*512chaser is one who purchases goods or services directly from a manufacturer, wholesaler, or other provider who has violated section 4 of the Clayton Act. 15 U.S.C. § 15(a). On the other hand, an indirect purchaser is one who purchases goods or services from a seller or provider who is down the marketing chain from the antitrust violator. See Illinois Brick, 481 U.S. at 746-47, 97 S.Ct. at 2074—75. The principal reason for allowing only direct purchasers to recover in antitrust is that “the uncertainties and difficulties in analyzing price and output decisions ‘in the real economic world rather than in an economist’s hypothetical model’ ” are too complex for most courts to tackle efficiently. Id. at 732, 97 S.Ct. at 2067-68 (quoting Hanover Shoe, 392 U.S. at 493, 88 S.Ct. at 2231). This policy rationale for allowing only direct purchasers to assert causes of action applies with equal force to the state antitrust laws.
As with any statute, our primary emphasis in construing the state antitrust laws is to determine the Legislature’s intent. See Pennington v. Singleton, 606 S.W.2d 682, 686 (Tex.1980). When determining legislative intent, we “look to the language of the statute, legislative history, the nature and object to be obtained, and the consequences that would follow from alternate constructions.” Union Bankers Ins. Co. v. Shelton, 889 S.W.2d 278, 280 (Tex.1994). The purpose and legislative history of Texas’s antitrust laws support the conclusion that the interve-nors’ claims are remediable only within the scheme of the Antitrust Act. The interve-nors, who were indirect purchasers down the marketing chain from the alleged antitrust violator, cannot use the DTPA as a “back door” to assert a claim against one they did not deal with directly.
When the Legislature passed the Antitrust Act in 1983, it intended to create a remedy for private parties, including consumers, where none had previously existed. When then Senator Lloyd Doggett' introduced the bill later enacted as the Antitrust Act to the Texas Senate, he explained that no private remedy existed at the time to remedy the harms which the Antitrust Act intended to provide. He stated:
There is under the Texas existing law no private remedy. As you know, under the federal Sherman Act and under the Clayton Act, there is a private remedy so that we do not rely on government ... entirely for cleaning up the market place where there is price fixing and other illegal antitrust conspiracies.... [0]ne of the most important changes is to provide for a private cause of action.
State Bar of Texas Antitrust and Business Litigation Section, Monograph: Texas Antitrust and Related Statutes, at III-58 (1991) (transcript of Senate Floor Debate, May 17, 1983) (emphasis added). It stands to reason that Senator Doggett would not have stated that there was “no private remedy” if in fact the DTPA was already providing a cause of action for antitrust violations at the time the Antitrust Act was being debated. Also, then Attorney General Jim Mattox was among those urging a treble damages clause in the Antitrust Act. He argued:
I think it’s very important ... that today even under these bid-rigging cases ... we’re having some difficulty in recovery, because if we move under federal law there are certain damage provisions, what we call treble damages that are available to us.
Those provisions are not available to us when it is a bid-rigging situation where it is not involved in interstate commerce.
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... [TJhat’s basically what we’re overall asking you to do, is to in effect cover the entire spectrum of business activity ... the single business, monopolistic-type practices, and then give us the power to enforce the law through bringing Texas into this area of improvement in our damages provisions, and in the penalties that can be assessed.
Monograph, supra, at III-3 (transcript of Hearing of Senate Jurisprudence Committee, Feb. 15, 1983).
When the Antitrust Act was passed, the version of the DTPA then in effect provided authority for treble damages. It also had the same unconscionability provision as it has today. See TexJBus. & Com.Code §§ 17.45(5), 17.50(a)(3). We have long recognized a pre*513sumption that the Legislature enacted a statute “with complete knowledge of the existing law and with reference to it.” Acker v. Texas Water Comm’n, 790 S.W.2d 299, 301 (Tex.1990). Furthermore, the Legislature is not presumed to have done a useless act. Webb County Appraisal Dist. v. New Laredo Hotel, Inc., 792 S.W.2d 952, 954 (Tex.1990); Hunter v. Fort Worth Capital Corp., 620 S.W.2d 547, 551 (Tex.1981). Had the conduct proscribed under the Antitrust Act already been covered by the provisions of the DTPA, as the intervenors argue, the Antitrust Act would have been unnecessary. Its treble remedies provision would have been redundant. I conclude that the Legislature did not commit a useless act in enacting the Antitrust Act in 1983. It provides causes of action and remedies not previously available.
Furthermore, no amendment to the DTPA since 1983 indicates any subsequent legislative intent to expand the DTPA to encompass price-fixing and monopoly claims. (Of course, there would be no need to do so, since the Antitrust Act serves this purpose.) No prior case by any court has held that price fixing and monopolization claims are proscribed by the DTPA; nor has any commentator suggested that they should be.
The intervenors and the dissenting opinion point to the cumulative remedy provisions of both the DTPA and the Antitrust Act as evidence that the DTPA may encompass the conduct alleged in this case. The cumulative remedy provision of the DTPA provides:
The provisions of this subchapter are not exclusive. The remedies provided in this subchapter are in addition to any other procedures or remedies provided for in any other law.... An act or practice that is a violation of law other than this subchapter may be made the basis of an action under this subchapter if the act or practice is proscribed by a provision of this subchap-ter or is declared by such other law to be actionable under this subchapter.
TexBus. & Com.Code § 17.43 (emphasis added). According to section 17.43, therefore, either the DTPA must make conduct illegal or another statute must, and refer to the DTPA as the source for a cause of action to remedy it. In short, there are two methods by which a DTPA cause of action can be reached. The Antitrust Act’s cumulative remedy provision states:
The provisions of this Act are cumulative of each other and of any other provisions of law of this state in effect relating to the same subject.
Id. § 15.02 (emphasis added). The Antitrust Act is cumulative if another statute provides a remedy “in effect relating to the same subject.” Unless at least one of these conditions is met, the DTPA and the Antitrust Act are not cumulative.
Under the foregoing provisions, may the intervenors maintain a DTPA cause of action? I think not. First, the DTPA itself does not cover, by its own terms, the conduct the intervenors alleged. The direct avenue to DTPA recovery is unavailable. Second, the Antitrust Act does not expressly declare that the conduct it proscribes is actionable under the DTPA Thus, a plaintiff cannot reach a DTPA claim via the Antitrust Act’s reference to it. There is no such cross-reference. The legislative history quoted above does not indicate an intent for the DTPA to provide the remedy for the subjects the Antitrust Act was intended to address. Moreover, the Antitrust Act contains its own remedy provisions for those entitled to make a claim for relief.
The dissent also argues that since the Antitrust Act is not expressly exempted from the DTPA, it must be cumulative with the DTPA This argument fails because of a false premise, namely that the DTPA initially would have addressed conduct covered by the Antitrust Act. The legislative history of the Antitrust Act establishes that because the DTPA did not initially cover claims sounding in antitrust, there was no need for an exemption.
For these reasons, the conduct alleged by the intervenors is not actionable under the DTPA