Crowley

RULING ON OFFER OF PROOF

This is an action for violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1 , 2, and Section 17043 of the California Business and Professions Code, which prohibits sales below cost. Defendants are several commonly-owned and controlled companies engaged since before 1969 in shipwork, i. e., providing tugs to assist vessels on San Francisco Bay and its tributaries. Plaintiff was organized and entered the shipwork business in competition with defendants near the end of 1971. It ceased operations in 1975. In this action plaintiff charges defendants with attempting to monopolize the shipwork business on San Francisco Bay by means of a variety of practices including the bundling of tug and pilot services, refusing to work jobs in conjunction with plaintiff’s tugs, supplying tugs by one defendant to another below cost, and stabilizing the prices charged for shipwork. It is the pricing aspect of this case with which this ruling is primarily concerned.

I.

The issue before the Court arises upon plaintiff’s offer of proof of damages. Plaintiff seeks to recover damages consisting of revenue which it claims to have lost as the result of defendants’…