The Fourth Circuit held today that the manner in which manufacturers of pest control products sold their products to consumers did not constitute illegal resale price maintenance.  The decision in Valupest.com of Charlotte, Inc. v. Bayer Corprejected Plaintiffs’ argument that an antitrust stalwart, United States v. General Electric Co., 272 U.S. 476 (1926)

The Business Court has mandatory jurisdiction under N.C. Gen. Stat. §7A-45.4 over claims involving "antitrust law, except claims based solely on unfair competition under N.C. Gen. Stat. §75-1.1.

The Court gave a broad reading to its grant of its antitrust jurisdiction in an Order today in Sonic Automotive, Inc. v. Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, in

The Court granted Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment, ruling that the defendants had participated in a conspiracy in restraint of trade with regard to public contracts for the remediation of underground storage tanks. The Court found that the defendants had engaged in an orchestrated effort to submit artificially high bids in response to a solicitation

The Court, again, considered the issue of indirect purchaser standing. It reiterated the factors it looks to in determining whether there is such standing, as articulated in its opinion in Crouch v. Crompton Corp.

Crouch had involved one product, tires, but this case involved ethylene propylene diene monomer, which the Court observed might be used

Plaintiff, a state agency, charged that the defendants had engaged in a conspiracy to fix prices for environmental consulting work. The defendants claimed that they were entitled to immunity under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. The Court rejected this argument, characterizing defendants’ supposedly protected conduct as involving the submission of false data for the purpose of inflating

The Court addressed again the issue of indirect purchaser standing under the North Carolina antitrust laws in these consolidated cases. It held that although such purchasers do have standing, there are limitations on that standing which barred the claims of the plaintiffs and it granted defendants’ motion to dismiss.

In the first case, the plaintiffs