Robertson
Robertson v. Isomedix, Inc. (In re Intl Nutronics, Inc.)
Opinion
Lead Opinion
Canby, J.
In this case, we must decide whether bid-rigging and anti-trust claims brought by a trustee on behalf of a bankrupt estate are barred by the res judicata effect of a bankruptcy court’s sale order.
BACKGROUND
International Nutronics, Inc., the estate in bankruptcy, was in the business of sterilizing medical instruments and other equipment by gamma radiation. The sterilization process involved the use of cobalt-60, an isotope of cobalt. Cobalt-60 is expensive and difficult to acquire. It is highly radioactive, decaying rapidly and losing its value as a source of gamma radiation. It poses significant health risks.
At the time it filed for bankruptcy, Nu-tronics was in possession of two quantities of partially decaj ed cobalt-60. One was located at Nutronics’s facility in Irvine, California; the other, at Nutronics’s facility in Palo Alto, California.
In November 1987, plaintiff-appellant Robertson, Nutronics’s Trustee in bankruptcy, solicited bids for the cobalt-60. Defendant appellees Isomedix and Radiation Sterilizers, Inc. (RSI), competitors in the radiation sterilization business, submitted separate bids. Isomedix offered to pay seventy cents per curie, 1 or about $600,000,…