The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state action doctrine did not shield the combination of two Georgia hospitals from FTC scrutiny because the state did not clearly articulate a policy empowering the local hospital authority to undertake mergers that will substantially lessen competition. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit declined to review a lower court decision not to dismiss on state action grounds antitrust claims against a private apartment complex that had an exclusive contract with a state university.
Other antitrust developments of note included the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s decision that a French pharmaceutical company that distributed its product in the United States through a licensee could not bring antitrust claims against the seller of a competing product because the French company was neither a consumer nor a competitor in the U.S. market and the Department of Justice’s comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) urging the commission to carefully consider the possibility that proposed transparency rules would increase the likelihood of coordination in natural gas markets.
