Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

The FTC required Pilot Corporation, owner of the largest travel center network in the United States, to sell 26 locations as part of a settlement that will replace the competition lost because of Pilot’s proposed $1.8 billion acquisition of Flying J Inc.’s travel center network. Pilot has agreed to sell the travel centers, which provide diesel, food, parking, and other amenities for truckers, to Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores, the smallest national travel center operator, currently concentrated in the South. According to the FTC’s complaint, the deal would have reduced competition for certain long-haul trucking fleets for which Pilot and Flying J were the first and second best choices for diesel.

To settle charges that its 2008 acquisition of three LandAmerica Financial, Inc. subsidiaries was anticompetitive, Fidelity National Financial, Inc. agree to sell several title plants and related assets in six geographic areas: 1) the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, consisting of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties; 2) Benton County, Oregon; 3) Jackson County, Oregon; 4) Marion County, Oregon; 5) Linn County, Oregon; and 6) the Detroit, Michigan, metropolitan area consisting of Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties.

U-Haul International, Inc. and its parent company settled FTC charges that they violated Section 5 of the FTC Act by inviting U-Haul’s closest competitor, Avis Budget Group, Inc., to collude on prices for truck rentals. U-Haul and Budget control more than 70 percent of the “do-it-yourself” one-way truck rental business in the United States. The FTC’s complaint alleges that on several occasions between 2006 and 2008, U-Haul tried to increase rates for one-way truck rentals by privately and publicly communicating with Budget, the second-largest truck rental company in the United States. The proposed settlement order against U-Haul and its parent company AMERCO bars them from inviting a competitor to divide markets, allocate customers, or fix prices, as well as participating in, maintaining, organizing, implementing, enforcing, offering, or soliciting any other company to engage in such conduct.

Service Corporation International (SCI), the nation’s largest provider of funeral and cemetery services, settled Commission charges that its proposed acquisition of Keystone North America Inc., the fifth-largest funeral and cemetery services provider in North America, raises antitrust concerns in several local markets for funeral services and cemetery services. The order requires SCI to sell 22 funeral homes and four cemeteries in 19 local markets to ensure competition is preserved following its acquisition of Keystone.

The Commission challenged Service Corporation International's (SCI) proposed acquisition of local rival Palm Mortuary, Inc.  At the time of the acquisition, SCI, the nation’s largest cemetery operator, was the third-largest provider of cemetery services in Las Vegas, Nevada, and after the acquisition of Palm, would have controlled 76 percent of the market for funeral services, which includes burial plots, opening and closing of graves, memorials, burial vaults, mausoleum spaces, and cemetery maintenance. The Commission's order required SCI to sell its cemetery and funeral home in Las Vegas to complete the acquisition of Palm.

The FTC announced a consent order that will maintain competition in the market for bulk de-icing road salt in Maine and Connecticut that otherwise would have been lost as a result of K+S Aktiengesellschaft’s (K+S) $1.68 billion proposed acquisition of Morton International, Inc. To protect state and local governments from higher prices, the order requires K+S’s U.S. subsidiary, International Salt Company LLC (ISCO), to sell its bulk de-icing salt assets in Maine to Eastern Salt Company, Inc., and to sell a similar set of assets in Connecticut to Granite State Minerals, Inc.