In re: Chocolate Confectionary Antitrust Litig.

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The U.S. chocolate market is dominated by three companies: Hershey, Mars, and Nestlé USA (the Chocolate Manufacturers). A certified class of direct purchasers of chocolate products and a group of individual plaintiffs alleged that the Chocolate Manufacturers conspired to raise prices on chocolate candy products in the United States three times between 2002 and 2007. They offered evidence of a contemporaneous antitrust conspiracy in Canada. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment. The Third Circuit affirmed, finding that the Canadian conspiracy evidence was ambiguous and did not support an inference of a U.S. conspiracy because the people involved in and the circumstances surrounding the Canadian conspiracy are different from those involved in and surrounding the purported U.S. conspiracy; evidence that the U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers knew of the unlawful Canadian conspiracy was weak and, in any event, related only to Hershey. Other traditional conspiracy evidence was insufficient to create a reasonable inference of a U.S. price-fixing conspiracy. View "In re: Chocolate Confectionary Antitrust Litig." on Justia Law