Joshua D. Aubuchon is Senior Counsel in our Tallahassee office

In Connecticut Fine Wine and Spirits, LLC v. Seagull, 916 F. 3d 160 (2d Cir. 2019), the court affirmed dismissal of an antitrust challenge to provisions of Connecticut's Liquor Control Act. A liquor retailer alleged that the state's minimum retail price provisions, "post-and-hold" provisions and price discrimination/volume discount provisions inhibited meaningful price competition at the retail level. The court ruled that none of the provisions were preempted, determining the following:

  • The provision requiring liquor retailers to sell to customers at or above a statutorily defined minimum price was not preempted by Section 1 of the Sherman Act as it compelled only vertical pricing arrangements among private actors.
  • The provision prohibiting price discrimination and requiring wholesalers to sell a given alcohol product to all retailers at the same price was not preempted by Section 1 of the Sherman Act, because the provision left each wholesaler at liberty to choose the price to charge all retailers and is purely vertical in operation.
  • The provision requiring wholesalers to post prices for alcohol products that they intended to sell during the following month did not impose a restraint on trade or require communication or collaboration between competitors, although it invited and facilitated conscious parallelism in pricing.

Poultry Price Fixing Allegations in Court

Darden Restaurants has filed an antitrust suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging that multiple poultry companies engaged in price fixing.

Food and Beverage Law Update: July 2019

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