Dagher

Plaintiffs Fouad N. Dagher, et ah, appeal from the district court’s award of summary judgment to the defendants, Texaco, Inc., Shell Oil Co., and Saudi Refining, Inc. (SRI), et al. The plaintiffs represent a class of 23,000 Texaco and Shell service station owners who allege that the defendants conspired to fix the nationwide prices for the Shell and Texaco brands of gasoline through the creation of a national alliance consisting of two joint ventures. The district court granted two summary judgment motions: one to dismiss defendant SRI because the plaintiffs lacked antitrust standing; the other to dismiss the complaint against the remaining defendants because the plaintiffs failed to raise a triable issue of fact as to whether the Sherman Antitrust Act’s per se prohibition against price fixing is applicable to the economic arrangements between the defendants. We affirm the district court’s ruling as to the plaintiffs’ standing to sue SRI, but reverse the district court’s decision that the plaintiffs failed to create a triable issue of fact under the Sherman Act.

I. Factual and Procedural History

A. Factual History

Texaco, Inc., and Shell Oil Co. were once fierce competitors in…

Concurring and Dissenting:

I agree that the plaintiffs lacked standing as to SRI and, therefore, concur in the result of part III of the majority opinion. However, I dissent from part IV.

While this case does involve a very complicated set of transactions, it presents a rather straightforward antitrust law question. That is, where former competitors create a bona fide joint venture to which all of their assets and operations in segments of their businesses are contributed, will there be a per se violation of the antitrust laws, if the joint venture entity sets the prices of the goods it sells? I think the answer is no.

Here, Shell and Texaco formed Equilon Enterprises, LLC in the western United States, and Motiva Enterprises, LLC in the eastern United States. 1 There can be no doubt that each of the new entities is a true, bona fide, economically integrated joint venture. Refineries, lubricant plants, research laboratories, thousands of service stations, thousands of miles of pipeline, thousands of employees, and over 100 terminals were contributed to the ventures. Upon those transfers, Shell and Texaco ceased refining and marketing operations in both the western and the…