Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

Under the terms of a consent order, The Institute of Store Planners must remove from its Code of Ethics any provision that prohibits its members from providing their services for free and any provision that prohibits competition with other members for work on the basis of price. According to the complaint, these rules unreasonably restrained price and nonprice competition among the members, depriving consumers of the benefits of competition among store planners. Its members provide architectural store design and store and merchandise planning to retail stores.

The corporation that represents household goods movers in Indiana settled charges that it filed collective intrastate rate tariffs with the State’s Department of Revenue on behalf of its members. According to the complaint issued with the consent order, these collective filings reduced competition for household goods moving services within the state, and the conduct was not protected by the state action doctrine because it was not actively supervised by the state.

A consent order settled antitrust concerns stemming from Exxon's acquisition of Mobil Corporation, but requires the largest retail divestiture in Commission history. The divestitures, representing only a fraction of the worldwide assets of Exxon and Mobil, include 2,431 gas stations; an Exxon refinery in California; a pipeline; and other assets. According to the complaint, the proposed merger would injure competition in moderate concentrated markets -California gasoline refining, marketing and retail sales of gasoline in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Texas; and in the highly concentrated markets for jet turbine oil.

Final consent order permits Pfizer’s merger with Warner-Lambert Company and requires divestitures in several pharmaceutical markets including: Pfizer’s RID brand of head lice treatment; Pfizer’s antidepressant drug, Celexa; Warner’s Cognex, a drug used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease; and assets relating to the Epidermal Growth Factor receptor tryosine kinase inhibitor - drugs under development to treat solid cancerous tumors such as head and neck, non-small cell lung, breast, ovarian, pancreas and colorectal cancers.

The FTC charged that Fastline Publications, Inc., a Kentucky publisher, and Mid-America Equipment Retailers Association, an Indiana trade association representing farm equipment dealers harmed competition when the publisher entered into agreements with the dealers to ban price advertising for new equipment in an attempt not to disclose those dealers who offered discounted prices.  According to the FTC, the agreements reduced competition among farm equipment dealers and deprived consumers of truthful and nondeceptive price information. The agreement to settle the charges prohibited Fastline and Mid-America from restricting the advertising of prices for farm equipment in the future.

Two separate consent orders settle antitrust concerns stemming from acquisitions by the Loewen Group of certain funeral homes and cemeteries that substantially reduced competition in Brownsville and Harlingen/San Benito, Texas, and in Castlewood, Virgina.  The orders require Loewen to divest properties in the three local markets to restore competition.

Consent order settles charges that the proposed acquisition of Solvay, S.A.'s animal health business would reduce competition in the market for the research, development, manufacture and sale of canine lyme vaccine, canine corona virus vaccine, and feline leukemia vaccine. The order requires divestiture of Solvay's U.S. and Canadian rights to the three types of vaccines to the Schering-Plough Corporation or another Commission-approved buyer.