Pamela Brennan v. Concord Efs, Inc.

Plaintiffs-Appellants (Plaintiffs) are automated teller machine (ATM) cardholders, who allege horizontal price fixing of fees paid to the ATM owners by the banks (issuing the ATM cards to the cardholders) when cardholders retrieve cash from an ATM not owned by their bank. Plaintiffs do not directly pay the allegedly fixed fee; therefore, as indirect purchasers, Supreme Court precedent prohibits Plaintiffs from bringing this suit. See Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720 , 97 S.Ct. 2061 , 52 L.Ed.2d 707 (1977). Further, Plaintiffs do not qualify for the narrow exceptions to the Illinois Brick rule, because (1) they do not allege a conspiracy to fix the price paid by the Plaintiffs and (2) the banks are not controlled by each other or by the ATM network. Therefore, Plaintiffs do not have standing under § 4 of the Clayton Act to proceed with their § 1 Sherman Act suit. We thus affirm the district court’s summary judgment dismissal of this suit for lack of antitrust standing.

We limit our discussion in this opinion to the issues relevant to standing. Because Plaintiffs lack antitrust standing, we do not address Plaintiffs’ appeal regarding the district court’s (1)…