Stanislaus Food Products v. USS-POSCO Indus., No. 13-15475 (9th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, a tomato cannery, filed suit under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, alleging claims that it pays artificially high prices as the result of an illegal market allocation agreement among the nation’s leading tin manufacturers who agreed to cede the tin mill products market in the western United States to UPI. The court concluded that U.S. Steel’s participation in the alleged conspiracy is economically implausible. Further, the court concluded that the evidence does not tend to exclude the possibility that the alleged conspirators were acting independently and therefore, plaintiff has failed to establish specific facts supporting a market allocation conspiracy. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants.
Court Description: Antitrust. Affirming the district court’s summary judgment on a claim under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the panel held that Stanislaus Food Products Co. failed to establish specific facts supporting a market allocation conspiracy among the nation’s leading tin manufacturers. Stanislaus alleged that it paid artificially high prices as the result of the tin manufacturers’ agreement to cede the tin mill products market in the western United States to a single company, USS-POSCO Industries. The panel concluded that alleged conspirator U.S. Steel Corp. did not have a plausible economic motive for the alleged agreement, and Stanislaus failed to present specific evidence that tended to exclude the possibility that the alleged conspirators acted independently.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.