Articles Posted in Antitrust for Kids

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Author:  Molly Donovan

At Argo Elementary, a group of kids gathers daily at lunch to buy and sell candy. The trading activity is a longtime tradition at Argo and it’s taken very seriously—more like a competitive sport than a pastime.

Candy trading doesn’t end once a 5th grader graduates from Argo. It continues across town at Chicago Middle School—but instead of lunch, candy trading happens there at the close of each school day. (The middle school had banned lunchtime trading due to several disputes that grew out of hand.)

Now here’s where it gets complicated, and nobody knows why it works this way, but the average lunchtime price at Argo determines the starting price for trades later in the day at Chicago.

For example: the average selling price for a candy bar on Monday, lunch at Argo is $2.50. Monday after-school prices at Chicago also will start at $2.50.

There are rules about what kind of candy can be traded—so that one trade can be easily compared to another (candied apples-to-candied apples) for purposes of determining who’s “winning.”

And sometimes kids—particularly the older ones at Chicago—place bets on what will happen on a particular trading day in the future, e.g., I bet prices will reach $3 or I bet no more than 50 candy bars will get sold this Friday.

That’s it by way of background. Here’s our story.

Arthur D. Midland (“ADM”) is 9. He is the link between Argo and Chicago. Each day, ADM leaves Argo Elementary when school lets out, walks to Chicago Middle, announces the “start-of-trade” Chicago price based on the lunchtime Argo price, and Chicago trading begins. (ADM’s mother allows this because ADM’s older brother (Midas) also trades at Chicago—so the two boys can watch each other.)

At the start of the school year, ADM contrived a very clever scheme. He bet Midas that, on Halloween, Chicago prices would be very low—as low as $1. Midas said, “No way! September prices are already at $2.50. If anything, prices will increase as kids go candy crazy in October. I’ll take that bet.”

So, for every candy bar sold at Chicago on Halloween for $1 or less, Midas would owe ADM $1. And for every candy bar sold at Chicago for more than $1, ADM would owe Midas $1.

With that bet front of mind, ADM became the primary candy seller at Argo, and as Halloween neared, he flooded Argo with candy and sold it intentionally at very low prices—50 cents for a Snickers! (ADM had the requisite inventory because he was an avid trick-or-treater and had saved all his Halloween candy from years past.)

Due to ADM’s scheme, Argo prices got so low that some kids packed up their candy and went home—refusing to trade there at all.

Well, Halloween finally came and, as you can imagine, ADM made a killing on the bet—100 candy bars were sold at Chicago on Halloween at less than $1, forcing Midas to pay ADM his entire savings. This more than compensated ADM for whatever losses he incurred for under-selling at Argo.

Once Midas realized ADM’s trick, he was furious. Didn’t ADM cheat? Midas assumed—as did all candy traders—that bets derived from candy sales would be based on real—not artificial—market forces.

Did ADM get away with it?

So far, no.

My Muse: For now, plaintiff Midwest Renewable Energy has survived a motion to dismiss its Section 2 monopolization claim against Archer Daniels Midland.

The claim is based on allegations of predatory pricing—basically that the defendant’s prices were below an appropriate measure of its costs and that the low prices drove competitors from the market allowing the defendant to recoup its losses. (For more on predatory pricing, read here.)

In the ADM case, Midwest alleges that ADM manipulated ethanol-trading prices at the Argo Terminal in Illinois to create “substantial gains” on short positions ADM held on ethanol futures and options contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Because the Argo prices determined the value of the derivatives contracts, by flooding Argo with ethanol that ADM sold at too-low prices, ADM allegedly was able to win big on the derivatives exchange—recouping whatever losses it incurred on the underlying asset.

On its motion to dismiss, ADM argued that Midwest had not sufficiently alleged that ethanol producers had exited the market due to ADM’s low prices or that ADM subsequently recouped its losses in the ethanol market. (ADM classed these arguments as going to antitrust injury.)

The Court agreed that Midwest was required to allege both that rivals exited the market and that recoupment was ongoing or imminent, but the court ruled Midwest’s allegations sufficient to do so.

Specifically, Midwest had alleged that 12 ethanol producers had either stopped or decreased ethanol production—which is enough at the motion to dismiss phase. The court said whether that alleged “handful” of plant closures had a discernible effect on consumers is a fact-intensive analysis not susceptible to resolution on the pleadings.

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Author:  Molly Donovan

You may remember Gordon—in many ways, he was dominant in the 5th grade, and though his behavior was questionable at times, he was very popular.

I’m writing this story because Gordon is starting a new school year and has ascended to MIDDLE SCHOOL. Very cool, but very intimidating—even for Gordon. For one thing, there is an entirely new set of rules about how students are supposed to behave.

In elementary school, there are rules, of course, but they’re intuitive (no pushing, no yelling, please share) and all kids are encouraged to form friendships with all other kids. You can walk to lunch with any other kid you choose to. You can play at recess with any group of kids you want to. This made things easy for Gordon who was a natural at buddying-up with classmates and forming new relationships with ease.

In middle school, things aren’t the same—there’s actually a rule against the buddy system that feels contrary to everything Gordon previously knew. Basically, the rule is: you cannot run around in friendship packs—or duos even—unless they are teacher approved. Why? The principal says the school is trying to eliminate friend groups that are probably going to cause trouble—by, for example, ganging up against the weaker kids who aren’t popular and don’t like gym, or getting too powerful on the playground and pestering the younger kids. The rule is not against combinations that will cause trouble, only that probably will.

You’re likely wondering how it will be determined whether a particular friend group meets that standard. Good question. Apparently, the test is not whether the parents and students —experts on who’s who in the ever-changing social dynamics of middle schools—believe a certain combination spells trouble. The principal and teachers will decide based on dusty old textbooks with opinions written years and years ago (we’re talking 1970s) about tween society.

Query whether that’s the best way. But that’s the way the teachers want to do things.

Did it work out? The school year just started, so it’s too soon to tell and the rules are in purgatory—they’re being publicly tested but are not official yet.

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Authors:  Molly Donovan & Luke Hasskamp

You may recall Liv, age 8—the new kid. Last we heard, Liv was getting pushed around by Paul, Greg and Adam (“PGA” for short) because she dared to build a mini-golf course in an attempt to challenge PGA’s longstanding position as the best and only mini-golf in town.

PGA was not happy about the new competition and unilaterally announced that any kid who played with Liv would be banned from the PGA’s more reputable course.

As we ended things last time, the town kids spoke with an antitrust lawyer and ultimately forced PGA to end the boycott. We thought that would be this story’s end, but what happened next was a real shock.

Liv and PGA were unsatisfied with the resolution forced upon them by the players. They each lawyered up as Liv accused PGA of abusing its dominant position in the mini-golf world causing Liv tens of dollars in antitrust damages. Turns out, the lawyer fees started adding up fast, and PGA could not continue to the fight.

As Liv and PGA spoke privately about how to resolve their dispute, they came up with a surprising idea that (they believed) would end PGA’s legal fees and satisfy Liv’s desire for a meaningful seat at the mini-golf table that could end her “new kid” stigma: why not merge? Liv and PGA could join forces permanently, becoming a mini-golf behemoth that would end the rivalry and potentially increase profits for all.

Great solution! Everything is neatly wrapped up and most importantly, by all accounts, Liv and PGA are seemingly good friends.

Wrong! The town government hates the idea. Why should the only two competitors in the mini-golf market be allowed to team up? Liv and PGA—now referred to as PGA Plus*—couldn’t stop the lawyer-fee-bleed after all. They had to keep their antitrust lawyers on retainer to gear up for their next battle: this time, against the town.

But is it really plausible that Liv and PGA want to be BFFs, living hand-in-hand in perpetuity? Is some contingent secretly going behind closed doors encouraging the government to tank the deal?**

If the new alliance is legit, how will PGA Plus defend the merits of a merger that unquestionably eliminates all existing (and probably all possible) competition?

We’ll wait and see as events continue to unfold in this thrilling antitrust tale.

Moral of the Story: One antitrust problem can lead to another. A dominant company like PGA can raise the specter of antitrust scrutiny by engaging in unilateral anticompetitive conduct or by collaborating or combining with another horizontal firm.

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Author:  Molly Donovan

Olive (named for the fruit) is in eighth grade. She’s a very good inventor. For the science fair, Olive developed a simple device that allows students, each morning, to pre-select lunch items, ensuring each student’s preference is available in the lunch line later that day. It’s a simple-looking machine that the school ended up placing in the lobby for actual student use.

And the kids loved it. Everyone pre-selected lunch. Why not?

Here’s the trouble: Olive was secretly in cohoots with a lunch vendor (her aunt Clementine—also named for the fruit) so that students could only pre-select items made in Clementine’s own kitchen! The device simply did not present other vendors’ items as options! The result: Clementine’s sales soared, her prices went unchecked and kids didn’t have the pre-selection choices they should have had.

You’d think they’d notice right away, but it took some time for the kids to catch on. Once it did become clear that pizza was missing and Clementine’s calzones dominated, the kids were mad.

Everybody complained to the principal: you’ve got Olive in exclusive control of this device that everybody wants to use, and she’s allegedly abused that power to grow her family’s own catering business.

Shameful, no?

So, here’s what happened. The principal (a former antitrust lawyer from an unnamed major firm) decided to use the problem in an educational exercise. She felt there was no serious dispute that, under the circumstances, Clementine should return the ill-gotten gains as a donation to the school. The only question: what amount?

EXPERTS! The principal—and she thought this was very smart—would have parent-economists make presentations at a school assembly: one team would argue, based on fancy charts and graphs, that the amount owed is big; the other team would argue, with equally fancy visuals, that the amount owed is nothing at all, or at best, pretty small. Then the kids would vote. Good idea, but…

Was there a hiccup? Yes. The principal made the mistake of letting the lawyer-parents get involved. For the assembly, the lawyers developed Daubert-style challenges—why one expert wasn’t sufficiently qualified or didn’t do a good enough job with her analysis to be allowed to present at all. Those challenges were supposed to last 10 minutes or so, with the remaining 20 minutes reserved for judging the analyses on their merits: Who is most convincing? What number should be THE number? That’s the important part, right?

But somehow the challenges—really meant to weed out only the unverifiable stuff—got completely out of hand. I mean, could someone with a PhD in economics really be unfit to talk about the dynamics of supply and demand in a lunch line? But the lawyer-parents ran with it.

So much time and energy was spent on the challenges, the principal had to bring it to a stop: no more Daubert. Everyone’s an expert. Let’s move to the important question at hand.

Moral of the Story: It was brought to us by Judge Gonzalez Rogers in the District Court for the Northern District of California in the In re Apple iPhone Antitrust Litigation. The court admonished the lawyers there for giving into the oft felt urge to overuse Daubert:

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Author:  Molly Donovan

Gordon was recognized as dominant in the 5th grade class. He had the greatest share of friends and ran the fastest. He was the smartest and won the most academic awards at the end of each school year. He was always chosen as the lead in every school play.

But one day, Gordon’s teacher accused him of cheating. Rather than playing fair, Gordon had excluded a new student, Samuel, from the playground races at school. Samuel showed real promise in track and field and Gordon hated to admit that he felt a bit threatened. Although he knew it was wrong, Gordon wrote a number of notes to classmates telling them to exclude Samuel from all playground races. His teacher, of course, found one of those notes.

That was bad enough, but Gordon went and made everything worse. For use during an upcoming parent-teacher conference, Gordon’s teacher instructed him to collect and keep all the notes he had written to friends demanding that they refuse to race against Samuel. Instead, Gordon shredded the notes and threw away the scraps! Then—and this is the real clincher—Gordon told his teacher, falsely, that he had preserved the notes as instructed.

Obviously, this all came out at the conference. There, the teacher argued that Gordon should be punished for throwing away the notes and lying about their being preserved. Gordon argued that punishment was not necessary—his conduct was not that bad since at least half the notes were to friends who had nothing to do with the boycott of Samuel anyway.

As you might expect, Gordon’s parents agreed with the teacher. The result: Gordon had to give back a significant portion of his monthly allowance and donate it to the school, and further punishment—publicly unknown—would wait until Gordon got home.  Eeeek!

Could Gordon continue his dominance after all that? You’ll have to wait for a future Antitrust for Kids to find out.

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Author: Molly Donovan

You might recall that Max and Margie are next-door neighbors on Lemon Lane.

In a strange turn of events, after Max was found liable for an illegal hub-and-spoke conspiracy against Margie, she let bygones be bygones and hired Max to procure materials for her lemonade stand and to develop new flavors of soft drinks for kids. In that role, Margie and Max agreed that, should Max ever leave Margie’s employ, he wouldn’t compete with Margie by working to sell any kids’ beverages within the city limits for a period of 2 years.

That was all fine until the FTC announced a proposed ban on non-competes, defining “non-compete clause” as a “contractual term between an employer and a worker that prevents the worker from seeking or accepting employment with a person, or operating a business, after the conclusion of the worker’s employment with the employer.” Substance is more important than form—so that if any agreement functions as a “non-compete,” under the FTC’s definition, it would be banned, too, regardless of its label.

Now Margie’s in a bind—does she undo her noncompete with Max? Does she try to language around the proposed ban? Does she wait to see if the ban comes to fruition? Certainly, due to their history, she doesn’t fully trust Max who she has trained at length (including in antitrust compliance), is privy to top-secret recipes, and has developed key relationships with Margie’s lemon suppliers, all in the course of his employment with Margie. Given all that, can’t he be stopped from competing against her in the event he works for another beverage company someday?

Here’s what Margie should know: the FTC has recognized two carve-outs to the potential ban—one for non-solicitation agreements and one for non-disclosures. Such agreements aren’t subject to the proposed ban because they don’t “prevent” workers from competing with their former employers. Instead, a non-solicitation would prevent workers only from soliciting clients or customers with whom the former employer has a business relationship. And non-disclosures would prevent workers only from using proprietary information learned during the course of employment in a new job.

If used as an alternative to a non-compete, these types of clauses should continue to be tailored to particular customers, products and geographic areas that are relevant to the employee at issue and the pertinent procompetitive justifications. An overly broad non-solicitation or non-disclosure could be said to function the same as a non-compete and therefore, become subject to the proposed ban.

Margie could consider other options as well. Perhaps a unilateral policy that deferred compensation or other incentive payments will be clawed back should a worker choose to compete, disclose confidential information in a new position, or disparage Margie in some way. Such a policy is not a contractual agreement because it’s unilateral, and it doesn’t prevent Max from competing—it merely discourages him. (Of course, Margie should be sure a clawback is legit under other laws like ERISA).

Further, if Margie is considering a stick, she might also consider a carrot: a unilateral incentive program for workers that don’t compete within a specified time period or a specific geographic region, etc.

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Author:  Molly Donovan

Nathan is nine. His grandmother makes excellent meatballs using an age-old family recipe. Together, Nathan and grandma decide to can the meatballs and sell them to their neighbors on the north side of town—just in time for the holidays as a turkey side dish.

Things went great until Nathan’s friend from school, Nicole, also started selling meatballs with help from her grandma. What are the chances? Fortunately, Nicole targeted sales on her side of town (the south side), so that the two meatball-preneurs didn’t directly butt heads.

Wanting to keep things that way, Nathan asked Nicole to make the arrangement official by forming a “strategic partnership”—the gist of it being that Nicole keep her meatballs out of the north side and Nathan keep his out of the south. Nathan even offered to compensate Nicole for any lost business she suffered from the arrangement, and to keep up appearances, Nathan would arrange a few sham transactions to make it look as though each meatball maker had a few sales in the other’s territory.

The glitch, unforeseeable to Nathan, was that Nicole’s dad works for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Well versed on the Division’s leniency program since birth, Nicole naturally reported the conduct to the government promptly—before agreeing to Nathan’s proposed deal.

And that was all it took. Although there was no meeting of the minds, so that Nathan couldn’t get nabbed for a Sherman Act Section 1 violation (criminal conspiracy), he did get tagged for a Section 2 violation—attempted monopolization. Poor Nathan was the youngest defendant ever to plead guilty to an antitrust felony. His sentence remains pending.

Moral of the Story: This is based on a true story! Nathan Zito, president of a paving and asphalt business pled guilty in October to attempted monopolization of the highway crack-sealing services in Montana and Wyoming based on his proposal to a competitor that they allocate markets by geography. Although the competitor was already cooperating with the DOJ, precluding a prosecution for Section 1, Nathan did plead guilty to attempted monopolization and will be subject to fines and imprisonment at his sentencing in February.

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Author:  Molly Donovan

Mr. Potter grows the best pumpkins in town. They’re big and round, perfect for carving, and specially treated with a patented spray that keeps Potter pumpkins squirrel-free for weeks. Genius!

Naturally, all the kids in town buy their Halloween pumpkins from Mr. Potter’s farmstand. They’re a bit more expensive than the competition’s pumpkins, but the price tag is worth the pumpkin perfection.

One thing the kids don’t buy at Mr. Potter’s farmstand: apple cider donuts. Everyone knows that Potter skimps on the cinnamon and sugar and the donuts are too dry besides. The other donuts available in town are loads better.

Seeing that his donuts were mostly going to waste, Mr. Potter could have exited the donut business altogether, but he considered himself a better business person than that. So, here’s what Mr. Potter came up with: no donuts, no pumpkins.

Eeek! Scary.

Mr. Potter made a sign reading:

One pumpkin + ½ dozen donuts = $12. Pumpkins NOT sold separately.

Mr. Potter felt this was perfectly fair—he should be rewarded for his ingenuity and his climb to the top of the local pumpkin market even if his customers felt a bit coerced to buy his donuts.

And the kids did feel coerced—having no choice but to swallow the undesirable donuts to get the pumpkins they needed for Halloween carving.

The donut competitors in town were equally mad. Mr. Potter’s scheme caused their sales to drop off dramatically, practically excluding them from the donut market, at least during the month of October.

But it is what it is, right?

Wrong. Fortunately for everyone (except Mr. Potter), Mikey’s mom happened to be an antitrust lawyer. (Mikey, age 4, was a connoisseur of both donuts and pumpkins, and was understandably very upset over the whole thing.)

When Mikey’s mom learned of Mr. Potter’s Halloween trick she said: this is an antitrust violation called tying!

Tying can run afoul of state and federal antitrust laws. Generally, tying is where a seller makes the sale of one product (or service) contingent on the sale of another product (or service)—leaving the consumer with no choice but to buy both. In tying analyses, most courts look at whether the seller has appreciable economic power in the tying product (pumpkins) to unfairly restrain competition in the tied product (donuts).

Here’s what happened next. Mikey’s mom approached Mr. Potter—”Look,” she said. “We want your pumpkins, but not your donuts. Don’t you know this is an antitrust violation? Your donut tie-in is anticompetitive.”

Mr. Potter – clever as he is – responded, “I’m simply making my donuts more competitive. My competition is free to sell pumpkins and donuts together, just as I’m doing. And, I have no real market power for pumpkins anyway when considering the entire county’s many pumpkin patches (beyond just our small town). Plus, my supposed tie has no effects beyond the month of October anyway—no harm, no foul. I’ll take the risk.”

But after giving it more thought, even if he could win a lawsuit, Mr. Potter did not want to invite an expensive and burdensome antitrust litigation. So as most antitrust disputes go, the matter was settled.  Potter agreed to the following: Potter pumpkins sold at wholesale to all local donut shops. The town’s best apple cider donuts sold wholesale to Mr. Potter. No ties, no tricks. The result: Halloween treats for all sold at competitive prices, and everyone lived happily ever after. Until the next Halloween anyway…

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Authors:  Molly Donovan & Luke Hasskamp

Liv is 8. She just moved to town from out of state and has 3 new neighbor friends Paul, Greg and Adam (“PGA”). The PGA kids seem very nice and well mannered. They wear pastels. And the coolest thing about them: they have a mini-golf course they built in their backyard years ago. It is touted as the best and most exclusive place for kids to play golf and rightly so. All the best mini golfers play there and only there. Frankly, there is no real competition for mini golf in the county.

Even though Liv is new to town, she thinks she has the chops to build a mini-golf course that rivals her neighbors’. Her house is bigger, her backyard is bigger, her parents will buy better equipment, and Liv is going to award the winner of each round a very fancy prize. Kids are thrilled—and one by one, even the best mini golfers start trying Liv’s course.

PGA is not happy. Stunned that Liv would challenge their longstanding position as the best and only course in town, they unilaterally announce that any kid who chooses to play in Liv’s yard will be banned from their original and still most popular and reputable course. Players must choose: one course or the other, but not both.

(The antitrust lawyer is growing concerned. This sounds like a monopolist trying to bully an emerging competitor by cutting off access to customers. What’s worse, Paul and Greg might be depriving kids of meaningful choice when it comes to mini golf.)

And for sure, the kids are upset, but they’re also a bit confused. On the one hand, any business owner has the right to choose with whom they will deal, right? On the other hand, PGA’s decision to punish kids who want to play at Liv’s every once in a while seems wrong.

The kids call their antitrust lawyer, and here’s what she says: you all should file a class action on behalf of every kid in town who wants to play at both courses and have a real choice when it comes to mini golf competition. The PGA contingent is not competing on the merits, that is, they are not getting mini golfers to come to their course by making it better. Instead, they are monopolists who are using their dominance unfairly to box out a nascent competitor. I’ll represent you, although I’m not sure what your monetary damages are. We could try to get an injunction but I’ll need a retainer for that.

Unable to raise enough funds for the retainer, the kids simply call up PGA demanding that their ban be ceased or else nobody will sit with them at lunch or play with them at recess. That did the trick and the ban was called off immediately. Now kids can play at both mini golf courses!

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