The opinion
FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, ex rel.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
SAFEWAY, INC., a Safeway No. 08-55671
Company doing business as Vons;
ALBERTSON’S, INC.; RALPHS D.C. No.
2:04-cv-00687-AG-
GROCERY COMPANY, a division of
the Kroger Company; FOOD 4 LESS SS
FOOD COMPANY, a division of the
Kroger Company; VONS COMPANIES
INC., an indirect, wholly owned
subsidiary of Safeway, Inc,
Defendants-Appellees,
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, ex rel.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr.,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
SAFEWAY, INC., a Safeway No. 08-55708
Company doing business as Vons; D.C. No.
ALBERTSONS, INC.; RALPHS GROCERY 2:04-cv-00687-AG-
COMPANY, a division of the Kroger SS
Company; FOOD 4 LESS FOOD
OPINION
COMPANY, a division of the Kroger
Company; VONS COMPANIES INC.,
an indirect, wholly owned
subsidiary of Safeway, Inc.,
Defendants-Appellees.
11925
11926 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Andrew J. Guilford, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted
October 8, 2009—Pasadena, California
Filed August 17, 2010
Before: Harry Pregerson, Stephen Reinhardt and
Kim McLane Wardlaw, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Reinhardt;
Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Wardlaw
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11929
COUNSEL
Edmund G. Brown Jr., Attorney General for the State of Cali-
fornia; Kathleen E. Foote, Senior Assistant Attorney General;
Barbara M. Motz, Supervising Deputy Attorney General;
Cheryl L. Johnson, Deputy Attorney General, and Jonathan
M. Eisenberg, Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia, for the plaintiff-appellants/cross-appellees.
Alan B. Clark, Peter K. Huston, Los Angeles, California, and
Jeremy P. Sherman, Chicago, Illinois, for respondent-
appellees/cross-appellants Safeway Inc. and the Vons Compa-
nies, Inc.
Jeffrey A. LeVee, Craig E. Stewart, and Kate Wallace, Los
Angeles, California, for respondent-appellee/cross-appellant
Albertson’s, Inc.
11930 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
Robert B. Pringle, San Francisco, California, for respondent-
appellees/cross-appellants Ralphs Grocery Company and
Food 4 Less Food Company.
Robin S. Conrad, Shane B. Kawka, Washington, District of
Columbia, for amicus curiae Chamber of Commerce of the
United States.
Charles I. Cohen, Jonathan C. Fritts and David R. Broderdorf,
Washington, District of Columbia, for amici curiae Chamber
of Commerce of the United States and Council on Labor Law
Equality.
Jeffrey A. Berman, Los Angeles, California, for amicus curiae
Employers Group.
Robert M. McKenna, Attorney General of Washington; and
Mark O. Brevard, Assistant Attorney General, Seattle, Wash-
ington; and Nancy H. Rogers, Attorney General of Ohio; and
Jennifer L. Pratt, Chief, Antitrust Section, Columbus, Ohio
for amici curiae Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada,
Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington and West
Virginia.
Nicholas W. Clark, Washington, District of Columbia, for
amicus curiae United Food and Commercial Workers Interna-
tional Union.
Michael D. Four, Los Angeles, California, for amici curiae
UFCW Local Unions 135, 324, 770, 1036, 1167, 1428 and
1442.
Andrew D. Roth, Washington, District of Columbia, for amici
curiae United Food and Commercial Workers International
Union, UFCW Local Unions 135, 324, 770, 1036, 1167, 1428
and 1442, Change to Win and AFL-CIO.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11931
Patrick J. Szymanski, Washington, District of Columbia, for
amicus curiae Change to Win.
Jonathan P. Hiatt, Washington, District of Columbia, for
amicus curiae AFL-CIO.
OPINION
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:
Our antitrust regime is the embodiment of Congress’s judg-
ment that, with rare and specific exceptions, free competition
for customers between firms protects and benefits the public
by increasing efficiency and output, lowering prices, and
improving the quality of the products and services available.1
Our labor laws exist to reduce strife between workers and
employers and to ensure that workers are able to organize,
and, by organizing, to promote their interests and protect their
rights.2 These laws are not antithetical, but have been harmo-
nized by Congress and the courts.
1
See Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U.S. 469, 493 (1940) (“The end
sought [by Congress in passing the Sherman Act] was the prevention of
restraints to free competition in business and commercial transactions
which tended to restrict production, raise prices or otherwise control the
market to the detriment of purchasers or consumers of goods and services,
all of which had come to be regarded as a special form of public injury”);
see also Volvo Trucks N. Am., Inc. v. Reeder-Simco GMC, Inc., 546 U.S.
164, 180 (2006) (“Interbrand competition, our opinions affirm, is the pri-
mary concern of antitrust law.” (citations and internal quotation marks
omitted)); Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan, 506 U.S. 447, 458 (1993)
(“The purpose of the [Sherman] Act is not to protect businesses from the
working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the
market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive,
even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy com-
petition itself. It does so not out of solicitude for private concerns but out
of concern for the public interest.”); City of Lafayette, La. v. La. Power
& Light Co., 435 U.S. 389, 398 (1978) (In passing the Sherman Act, Con-
gress “sought to establish a regime of competition as the fundamental
principle governing commerce in this country.”).
2
See, e.g., 29 U.S.C. § 102 (titled “Public policy in labor matters
declared,” and stating “[w]hereas under prevailing economic conditions,
11932 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
In this case, the three largest supermarket chains in South-
ern California agreed to share profits amongst themselves and
with a fourth supermarket chain during the indeterminate term
of, and for a short period after, an anticipated labor dispute.
The central issue here is whether a profit sharing agreement
that would ordinarily violate the antitrust laws is excused
from compliance under the nonstatutory labor exemption
because it constitutes an economic weapon used by the
employers in their efforts to prevail in a labor dispute. Alter-
natively, defendants contend that because the agreement will
aid them in achieving lower labor costs, it results in a procom-
petitive benefit that outweighs its anticompetitive effects, and
thus is not unlawful under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. See
15 U.S.C. § 1. The defendants also contend that the agreement
is not anticompetitive because it may be of relatively short
duration and because defendants between them control less
than a 100% share of the market. Although we devote a con-
siderable part of our discussion to explaining why the profit
sharing agreement is anticompetitive, we doubt that anyone
would seriously suggest that the agreement was lawful if it
had been adopted simply in order to benefit defendants eco-
nomically, and there had been no impending labor dispute.
The most important part of our discussion, therefore, deals
with the central issue: whether the fact that defendants’ agree-
ment was designed for use as an economic weapon in a labor
developed with the aid of governmental authority for owners of property
to organize in the corporate and other forms of ownership association, the
individual unorganized worker is commonly helpless to exercise actual
liberty of contract and to protect his freedom of labor, and thereby to
obtain acceptable terms and conditions of employment, wherefore, though
he should be free to decline to associate with his fellows, it is necessary
that he have full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation
of representatives of his own choosing, to negotiate the terms and condi-
tions of his employment”; First Nat. Maint. Corp. v. N.L.R.B., 452 U.S.
666, 674 (1981) (“A fundamental aim of the National Labor Relations Act
is the establishment and maintenance of industrial peace to preserve the
flow of interstate commerce.”).
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11933
dispute changes or excuses the anticompetitive nature of the
agreement.
I.
Defendants Albertson’s, Vons (for which defendant
Safeway, Inc. is the parent company), Ralphs and Food 4 Less
are supermarket chains operating in Southern California.
Ralphs, Albertson’s and Vons, which are the three largest
supermarket chains in that region, and possess a commanding
share of the market, had a collective bargaining agreement
with various unions affiliated with the United Food and Com-
mercial Workers (“UFCW”) that was set to expire on October
5, 2003. Food 4 Less had a separate contract with the same
unions that did not expire until four months later, the succes-
sor to which was to be reached through a separate negotiation.
In July and August 2003, Ralphs, Albertson’s and Vons
agreed with the unions that the three chains would act as a
multiemployer bargaining unit for the purpose of negotiating
a successor to their expiring contract. Among other goals,
these firms sought terms that would decrease the costs of
labor, in particular the cost of providing health coverage to
workers.
In anticipation of the unions using whipsaw tactics (in
which unions strike or picket only one employer in a multiem-
ployer bargaining unit), Ralphs, Albertson’s and Vons, along
with Food 4 Less, entered into a Mutual Strike Assistance
Agreement (hereinafter, the MSAA). In the MSAA, the four
supermarket chains agreed that they would all lock out their
union employees within 48 hours of a strike against any one
or more of them, a traditional tactic in labor disputes. More
significantly, in what defendants term a “revenue sharing pro-
vision,” the MSAA provided for the sharing of profits during
the strike, regardless of its length. This provision stated that,
in the event of a lockout or strike, any firm that earned reve-
nues above its historical share of the combined revenues of all
four firms would redistribute 15% of those surplus revenues
11934 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
among the other chains according to a fixed formula. Accord-
ing to Richard Cox, a Safeway (Vons) vice president who
helped draft the MSAA, the 15% number was intended as an
estimate of the profit that a chain would earn on increased
sales without having to increase fixed costs. The purpose of
the profit sharing provision was to maintain each defendant’s
pre-labor dispute market share. Food 4 Less was included in
the agreement to share profits despite being outside the mul-
tiemployer bargaining unit and despite having a separate col-
lective bargaining agreement with the UFCW-affiliated
unions that was expiring at a different time, the successor to
which was to be negotiated separately. Additionally, the
chains agreed to share profits according to the same formula
in the event that Food 4 Less was struck during its later, sepa-
rate collective bargaining process. Under the terms of the
agreement, profit sharing was to continue for two full weeks
after the termination of any strike or lockout. Thus, in the
event that a strike or lockout involving the three largest super-
market chains in Southern California caused members of the
public to patronize Food 4 Less, one of the next largest super-
market chains in the region, Food 4 Less was required to
share its extra profits with the strike-bound firms.
The profit sharing agreement covered 859 Ralphs, Albert-
son’s and Vons stores in Southern California, as well as 101
Food 4 Less stores that operated in the same area. According
to data collected by AC Nielsen, Albertson’s, Ralphs, Vons,
and Food 4 Less accounted for at least 55% and as much as
64% of the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area mar-
ket during every quarter of 2003-04, including the quarters
during which the labor dispute occurred, and between 66%
and more than 75% of the San Diego metropolitan area mar-
ket during the same period. See Declaration of Thomas R.
McCarthy, exs. 3A-3D. A fair estimate of the four chains’
collective market share of the Los Angeles-Long Beach por-
tion of the Southern California market both before and after
the strike would appear to be at least 60% and of the San
Diego area portion at least 70%.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11935
On October 11, 2003 the unions struck local Vons stores.
Pursuant to their agreement, Ralphs and Albertson’s (but not
Food 4 Less) locked out their union employees the next day.
The unions initially picketed all three supermarket chains but
stopped picketing Ralphs stores on October 31, 2003. The
strike received extensive news coverage, including a front
page story in the Los Angeles Times on November 1, 2003
that reported the existence of a plan for the chains to share the
financial burden of the strike. See Nancy Cleeland and
Melinda Fulmer, In Tactical Move, Union Pulls Pickets from
Ralphs, L.A. Times, Nov. 1, 2003, at A1. Selective picketing
of Vons and Albertson’s stores continued until February
2004, when a new labor contract was reached and the strike
ended. Pursuant to the profit sharing agreement, Ralphs and
Food 4 Less paid Vons and Albertson’s approximately $142
million for the strike period, and $4.2 million for the two-
week period following the strike.
California filed a lawsuit against defendants, alleging that
by entering into the profit sharing agreement, defendants had
engaged in an unlawful combination and conspiracy in
restraint of interstate trade and commerce in violation of Sec-
tion 1 of the Sherman Act. The state sought a declaratory
judgment that the profit sharing agreement violates Section 1,
as well as attorney fees.
Defendants contended, among other defenses, that the non-
statutory labor exemption applied, and the district court bifur-
cated the case to allow defendants to seek a ruling as to its
applicability. Ultimately, the court denied defendants’ sum-
mary judgment motion based on their nonstatutory labor
exemption contention. See California v. Safeway, Inc., 371 F.
Supp. 2d 1179 (C.D. Cal. 2005). Defendants unsuccessfully
moved the trial court to certify the nonstatutory labor exemp-
tion issue for interlocutory appeal, and unsuccessfully tried to
appeal directly to this court. After this, California filed a sum-
mary judgment motion seeking a ruling that the profit sharing
agreement was either a per se violation of § 1 or was unlawful
11936 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
under an abbreviated rule-of-reason, “quick look” analysis.
The district court denied California’s motion, and subse-
quently denied its motion to certify the order for interlocutory
appeal. It also denied defendants’ renewed motion for sum-
mary judgment based on the nonstatutory labor exemption.
Final judgment was entered after a stipulation in which Cali-
fornia agreed not to pursue judgment under a full rule of rea-
son analysis, and defendants withdrew all affirmative
defenses except for the claim that the profit sharing agreement
was protected from antitrust review by the nonstatutory labor
exemption. See State of California v. Safeway et al., No. CV
04-0687 (C.D. Cal., filed Mar. 27, 2008). Both California’s
appeal and defendants’ cross-appeal were timely. The appeal
is not moot because the case falls squarely within the rule for
situations that are “capable of repetition, yet evading review.”
See United States v. Brandau, 578 F.3d 1064, 1067 (9th Cir.
2009).
II.
We must determine first whether defendants’ profit sharing
agreement violates § 1 of the Sherman Act, which bans agree-
ments or combinations that act as unreasonable restraints on
interstate commerce. See State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3,
10 (1997). Defendants entered into an agreement to share
profits. Such agreements have traditionally been held to be
anticompetitive because they remove the incentive to engage
in competitive behavior. Defendants have three principal con-
tentions as to why their profit sharing agreement is different:
first, that their profit sharing is for a limited, if indefinite
period; second, that their agreement does not include 100% of
the participants in the market; and third, by way of response
to plaintiff’s prima facie case, that by aiding them to prevail
in the labor dispute and achieve their goal of lowering wages
and benefits paid to their employees, the agreement aids com-
petition in the Southern California market. It is obvious intu-
itively and from a rudimentary knowledge of economics, as
well as from a reading of the case law, that neither the agree-
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11937
ment’s limited duration nor its failure to include the frag-
mented group of other firms operating in the market could do
more than reduce the ordinary anticompetitive effects of such
agreements. Certainly these factors would not eliminate such
effects. In this section we confirm that conclusion by analyz-
ing the details, logic, and circumstances of the particular
profit sharing agreement, including its relationship to the
anticipated strike. Our answer is still the same in every
respect. The agreement’s effect is necessarily anticompetitive,
and, like any other profit sharing agreement of limited dura-
tion among firms that control less than 100% of the market,
the anticompetitive effects might be reduced to some extent
but they certainly would not be eliminated.
Accordingly, the only real question is whether the agree-
ment, patently anticompetitive on its face, should be held
valid because of its role as an economic weapon for the defen-
dants in a labor dispute. This question has two different
aspects: first, whether aiding employers in winning labor dis-
putes and, as a result, in reducing the wages and benefits they
pay their employees, constitutes a procompetitive benefit that
would overcome the anticompetitive effects of their conduct
and render their otherwise anticompetitive conduct lawful
under the Sherman Act; and second, whether, because of its
role in a labor dispute, the profit sharing agreement is exempt
from the antitrust laws under the nonstatutory labor exemp-
tion. We address the first of these questions at the end of this
section. The second is the subject of the subsequent and sepa-
rate section, Section III.
A.
[1] The basic method of analysis for determining whether
an agreement is an unreasonable restraint on trade such as
violates § 1 of the Sherman Act is rule of reason review, in
which a court looks to factors such as “specific information
about the relevant business,” “the restraint’s history, nature,
and effect,” and “[w]hether the businesses involved have mar-
11938 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
ket power,” with the purpose of “distinguish[ing] between
restraints with anticompetitive effect that are harmful to the
consumer and restraints stimulating competition that are in the
consumer’s best interest.” See Leegin Creative Leather Prod-
ucts, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc, 551 U.S. 877, 885-886 (2007).
[2] Full rule of reason review is data-intensive, and, conse-
quently, expensive for litigants; also, it consumes large
amounts of courts’ time and resources. See Arizona v. Mari-
copa County Medical Soc., 457 U.S. 332, 344 & n.14 (1982).
For these reasons, as well as to provide guidance to the busi-
ness community, see Continental T.V., Inc., v. GTE Sylvania
Inc., 433 U.S. 36, 50 n.16 (1977), courts have developed sum-
mary methods of identifying § 1 violations in circumstances
in which such violations are discernible without a full rule of
reason analysis: per se review and quick look review. Per se
analysis examines whether prior judicial experience with the
type of restraint at issue is sufficient to allow a determination
that it would always or almost always tend to restrict competi-
tion and decrease output. See Leegin, 551 U.S. at 886. The
focus of the inquiry is on accumulated data from prior deci-
sions: an agreement may be declared unlawful with no further
analysis, simply by virtue of its being of a type that courts
have previously determined to have “manifestly anticompeti-
tive effects,” and no “redeeming virtue.” Id.
In contrast, an arrangement is violative of § 1 under a quick
look approach when “an observer with even a rudimentary
understanding of economics could conclude that the arrange-
ments in question would have an anticompetitive effect on
customers and markets.” California Dental Ass’n v. F.T.C.,
526 U.S. 756, 770 (1999). Quick look review is not necessar-
ily based on a history of rule of reason adjudications; rather,
it asks whether “a great likelihood of anticompetitive effects
can easily be ascertained” by examining the restraint, and
considering defendants’ justifications of it. See id.; see also
Phillip E. Areeda & Herbert Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law,
¶ 1911a, p. 267 (3d. ed. 1996) (Quick look review “is usually
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11939
best reserved for circumstances where the restraint is suffi-
ciently threatening to place it presumptively in the per se
class, but lack of judicial experience requires at least some
consideration of proffered defenses or justifications.”).3
California contends that defendants’ profit sharing arrange-
ment violates § 1 under both per se and quick look review. Its
assertion that the agreement strongly resembles arrangements
that prior cases have found violative of § 1 is correct,
although the particular circumstances of the restraint in ques-
tion do differ from the circumstances relating to the profit
sharing arrangements examined in those earlier cases. It is,
however, unnecessary for us to determine whether such dif-
ferences are sufficiently material to cause us to refrain from
holding that defendants’ profit sharing agreement was illegal
under a strict per se analysis, because the agreement was
plainly illegal under a quick look or, more accurately, a com-
bined or mixed form of review. “[A] great likelihood” that
defendants’ profit sharing arrangement produced “anticompe-
titive effects” is manifest, Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 770,
and defendants offer no plausible procompetitive benefits
such as would overcome or neutralize those effects so as to
require full rule of reason analysis.
3
Inherent in the summary nature of quick look and per se analysis is the
possibility that a restraint that would survive a full rule of reason analysis
in a particular case will nonetheless be invalidated: “[f]or the sake of busi-
ness certainty and litigation efficiency, we have tolerated the invalidation
of some agreements that a fullblown inquiry might have proved to be rea-
sonable.” See Maricopa County Medical, 457 U.S. at 344. The ultimate
inquiry in both analyses is establishing a sufficiently high likelihood of
anticompetitive effect to justify foreclosing, in the name of certainty and
efficiency goals, the possibility that a more in depth review would reveal
that a restraint was on balance benign or even beneficial. See Major
League Baseball Properties, Inc. v. Salvino, Inc., 542 F.3d 290, 340 (2d
Cir. 2008) (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (quick look and per se “methods of
analysis are reserved for practices that ‘facially appear [ ] to be one[s] that
would always or almost always tend to restrict competition and decrease
output.’ ” (quoting Broad. Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broad. Sys., Inc., 441
U.S. 1, 19-20 (1979) (alterations in original)).
11940 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
[3] Although the parties briefed the case on the traditional
view that the two summary forms of review are separate and
unrelated, and we discuss the questions they posed separately
to some extent, we ultimately consider the lawfulness of the
agreement in light of the Supreme Court’s recent explanation
that “our categories of analysis are less fixed than terms like
‘per se,’ ‘quick look’ and ‘rule of reason’ tend to make them
appear.” Id. at 779. According to Justice Souter, writing for
the Court, “what is required . . . is an enquiry meet for the
case, looking to the circumstances, details, and logic of a
restraint,” with the object of determining “whether the experi-
ence of the market has been so clear, or necessarily will be,
that a confident conclusion” can be drawn that the “principal
tendency” of an agreement is anticompetitive. Id. at 780-71.
We follow the Court’s suggestion, and apply a mixed or
blended approach, engaging in an analysis “meet for the case”
— here, a thoroughgoing analysis that compels our confident
conclusion that the principal tendency of defendants’ agree-
ment is anticompetitive and that the agreement thus violates
§ 1 of the Sherman Act. Accordingly, we reverse the district
court and hold that defendants’ profit sharing arrangement is
unlawful.
B.
We first discuss the applicability of strict per se analysis.
“The rationale of the rule of per se illegality depends on the
premise[ ] that . . . judicial experience with a particular class
of restraints shows that virtually all restraints in that class
operate so as to reduce output or increase price.” Areeda &
Hovenkamp, ¶ 1911a, p.265. Accordingly, application of the
per se rule is limited to restraints of a type that courts’ “con-
siderable experience” has revealed to have “manifestly anti-
competitive effects,” and no “redeeming virtue,” such that
judges can “predict with confidence that it would be invali-
dated in all or almost all instances under the rule of reason.”
Leegin, 551 U.S. at 886-87. Thus, the question for per se anal-
ysis is whether defendants’ agreement is of a type that courts
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11941
have previously determined to have such pernicious effects.
California argues that defendants’ profit sharing arrangement
was both a profit pooling agreement and a market allocation
agreement, each of which courts have determined to be sub-
ject to per se invalidation. As we explain below, the conten-
tion that defendants’ agreement was a market allocation
agreement is without merit. The question whether it was a
profit sharing agreement sufficiently similar to the profit shar-
ing agreements that courts have previously examined and
invalidated is much closer. Below, we discuss the relationship
between defendants’ profit sharing agreement and profit shar-
ing agreements invalidated in prior cases, but ultimately do
not determine whether defendants’ agreement constituted a
per se violation of the Sherman Act. Rather, as we explain in
Section II.C infra, in determining that it was unlawful, we
apply a per se-plus or a quick look-minus analysis, a com-
bined or mixed approach, somewhere between pure per se and
pure quick look, along the lines suggested by the Court in
California Dental Association.
1.
California contends that defendants’ profit sharing agree-
ment is essentially identical to those profit pooling and shar-
ing schemes that the Supreme Court has found to be per se
violations of § 1. See Citizens Publ’g Co. v. United States,
394 U.S. 131, 134-35 (1969) (“Pooling of profits pursuant to
an inflexible ratio at least reduces incentives to compete for
circulation and advertising revenues and runs afoul of the
Sherman Act.”); see also United States v. Paramount Pic-
tures, 334 U.S. 131, 149 (1948) (profit sharing agreement a
“bald effort[ ] to substitute monopoly for competition”); N.
Sec. Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197 (1904); Chicago, M
& St. P. Ry. Co. v. Wabash, St. L. & P. Ry. Co., 61 F. 993 (8th
Cir. 1894); Anderson v. Jett, 12 S.W. 670 (Ky. 1889).
[4] Profit pooling or profit sharing arrangements eliminate
incentives to compete for customers along every dimension:
11942 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
there is little purpose in attempting to attract another firm’s
customers by lowering prices, improving quality or taking any
other measure if the profits earned from those new customers
would be placed in a common pool in which the other firm is
a participant, and the proceeds distributed in the same way no
matter which participant in the profit pool generated the
underlying sales, or if transfer payments are made between
firms to achieve the same effect. See N. Sec. Co., 193 U.S. at
328 (pooling profits “destroys every motive for competition
between . . . natural competitors. . . .”); Chicago, M. & St. P.
Ry. Co., 61 F. at 997 (a profit sharing agreement by which
railroads that carried less than a predetermined share of
freight were compensated by other railroads such that their
share of total revenues remained constant had “[t]he necessary
and inevitable result of . . . foster[ing] and creat[ing] poorer
service and higher rates.”). The Sherman Act was intended to
curb just such restraints on competition.
Defendants contend that there are three ways in which their
scheme differs from the profit pooling or sharing that was
held unlawful in prior cases. The first of these contentions is
meritless. Defendants argue that, unlike the agreements in
prior cases, which provided that the parties would share all
profits, their agreement provides that any party that experi-
ences an increase in relative market share would share with
the others only 15% of its increase in relative revenue, and
that the sums to be redistributed are less than all of the profits
earned on those increased revenues. There is no question,
however, that the 15% figure was the defendants’ estimate of
the total additional profits to be earned as a result of any
increase in relative market share while the profit sharing
agreement was in effect. This intention to share all the addi-
tional profits earned is what is relevant. Richard Cox, a vice
president of Safeway who helped to draft the agreement,
stated in his deposition that the 15% was meant to represent
accurately the profit that a chain would collect on increased
revenues that were earned without an increase in fixed costs.
Defendants do not dispute the accuracy of his testimony.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11943
Their proffer is the statement of their expert witness, who
conjectured that it was “plausible” and “likely” that incremen-
tal profits were greater than 15% of revenues, but admitted
that he had done no analysis of incremental profitability based
on data.4 Defendants cannot force the expense of full rule-of-
reason litigation on courts and opposing parties simply by
speculating that they may have gotten their math wrong when
they were setting up their scheme to share profits; their intent
to share profits is sufficient, whether or not the scheme as
implemented achieved that objective to perfection.
Defendants’ other two contentions, however, persuade us
that there is sufficient question as to whether we should inval-
idate their profit sharing scheme under a strict per se approach
that we should refrain from doing so. Rather, we conclude
that additional analysis of the agreement and its likely effects
would be beneficial and that we should proceed to a quick
look approach, or, more accurately, to a mixture or combina-
tion of the two approaches.
[5] First, while profit sharing agreements in previous cases
were to last for decades or permanently, defendants’ scheme
is scheduled to last only for the period of the labor dispute,
plus two additional weeks. See Citizens Publ’g, 394 U.S. at
133 (fifty year agreement); Paramount Pictures, 334 U.S. at
131 (considering apparently permanent profit sharing agree-
ments); N. Sec. Co., 193 U.S. at 197 (finding illegal an appar-
ently permanent profit pooling arrangement); Chicago, M. &
St. P. Ry. Co., 61 F. at 996 (“[t]he contract was to continue
for 25 years”). That the term of the scheme could expire in a
relatively short period — anywhere from a week or two to a
4
We note that the district court should not have accorded the expert’s
statement any weight given its explicitly speculative nature. “An expert’s
opinions that are without factual basis and are based on speculation or
conjecture” are inadmissible at trial and are “inappropriate material for
consideration on a motion for summary judgment.” Major League Base-
ball Properties, Inc. v. Salvino, Inc., 542 F.3d 290, 311 (2nd Cir. 2008).
11944 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
year or more, depending on the length of the strike — is no
defense if the scheme is anticompetitive. Section 1 of the
Sherman Act proscribes all anticompetitive agreements,
regardless of their duration: neither the text of the statute nor
the case law contains an exception for anticompetitive agree-
ments that last for less than a fixed period of substantial
length. However, defendants’ contention is that no anticompe-
titive effects could result from their arrangement, because the
potentially short term of the profit sharing leaves them with
sufficient incentive to compete for customers, whose alle-
giance might be retained after the end of the strike. Because
courts have not previously considered profit-sharing arrange-
ments of a potentially short duration, we prefer not to simply
apply a pure per se analysis to defendants’ arrangement.
Second, unlike firms in most of the prior profit sharing
cases, which were the only firms of their kind operating in the
relevant market, defendants were not the only supermarkets in
the affected areas. See, e.g., Citizens Publ’g, 394 U.S. at 133
(defendants the only general distribution newspapers in Tuc-
son). As we conclude in Section IV.B below, California is
correct that a profit sharing plan need not cover the entire
market in order to affect competition. However, it is incorrect
that the distinction between a profit sharing plan that covers
the entire market and one that does not is unworthy of any
consideration before we make a determination whether anti-
competitive effects will result from an agreement. As with the
previous distinction, courts have not explored the question
sufficiently to allow us to feel entirely comfortable with
applying a strict per se approach here.
2.
California also contends that the profit sharing agreement
was a market allocation agreement that allocated the Southern
California grocery market according to defendants’ historic
shares of that market. Market allocation agreements are “clas-
sic per se antitrust violation[s].” See United States v. Brown,
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11945
936 F.2d 1042, 1045 (9th Cir. 1991). Courts have treated as
unlawful market allocations agreements assigning particular
territories to particular vendors, see Palmer v. BRG of Ga.,
Inc., 498 U.S. 46, 49-50 (1990) (per curiam); United States v.
Topco Assoc., Inc., 405 U.S. 596 (1972), assigning certain
customers to certain vendors, see White Motor Co. v. United
States., 372 U.S. 253 (1963), and capping total sales volume
of the market and assigning participants fixed shares of that
total volume, see United States v. Andreas, 216 F.3d 645,
666-68 (7th Cir. 2000). The common thread to these decisions
is that in allocating the market, firms ensure that customers
attempting to purchase products in the relevant market will
have fewer firms competing for their business.
In contrast to the agreements at issue in the market alloca-
tion cases, however, defendants’ agreement is not alleged to
have decreased the number of firms available to customers.
Rather, California alleged that the agreement simply reduced
the competition for customers among the defendant firms.
Thus, it does not allege a market allocation claim appropriate
for either strict per se analysis or a mixed or blended
approach, and we need proceed no further with that question
in this opinion.
3.
[6] In view of the above, we decline to hold that California
prevails on a strict per se theory.
C.
[7] Turning from a strict per se to a quick look, or rather,
in this case, to a combined or mixed approach, our analysis
requires a thoroughgoing inquiry. An agreement is violative
of § 1 of the Sherman Act under a quick look analysis when
“an observer with even a rudimentary understanding of eco-
nomics could conclude that the arrangements in question
would have an anticompetitive effect on customers and mar-
11946 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
kets.” Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 770. If so, the burden of
proof shifts to the defendant “to show empirical evidence of
procompetitive effects.” See id. at 775 n.12; Areeda &
Hovenkamp, ¶ 1914d1, p. 315-16. Accordingly, a court seek-
ing to determine on a “quick look” whether an arrangement
is violative of § 1 must first determine whether it can “easily
. . . ascertain[ ]” a “great likelihood of anticompetitive
effects,” see Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 770, and, if so,
whether any such effects are neutralized or outweighed by
procompetitive benefits.
Taking into account the Supreme Court’s recent explana-
tion that the “categories of analysis of anticompetitive effect
are less fixed than terms like ‘per se,’ ‘quick look,’ and ‘rule
of reason’ tend to make them appear,” and that rather than
drawing “categorical line[s]” between restraints, a court
reviewing an agreement that is alleged to violate § 1 must
conduct “an enquiry meet for the case,” see id. at 779-81, we
look here to the history of judicial experience with profit shar-
ing agreements, apply rudimentary economic principles to the
meaning and effects of the particular agreement in question,
and thoroughly analyze the circumstances, details and logic of
the agreement in order to determine the likelihood of anticom-
petitive effects. After doing so, we consider the purported
procompetitive effects that the defendants suggest are suffi-
cient to overcome any anticompetitive effects of the agree-
ment. The question, then, under the combined or mixed
approach is whether, after conducting the review and analysis
we have just described, we reach a “confident conclusion
[that] the principal tendency” of the agreement is to restrict
competition. See id. at 781.
We note that a “confident conclusion” does not always
prove ultimately correct. See supra note 3. Rather, it repre-
sents a tool of judicial economy designed to save the litigants
and the courts a considerable investment of time and money,
which in the balance is to the benefit of all. That occasionally
we might be wrong is a price that it is long established that
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11947
society is willing to pay. We might also note that some of the
conclusions of which our leading economic experts have been
confident have turned out to be incorrect. For example, Alan
Greenspan, appointed and then reappointed Chairman of the
Federal Reserve for five terms by four different Presidents,
recently admitted to a significant flaw in the ideology that
caused him to support and implement policies of financial
deregulation: “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-
interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were
such that they were best capable of protecting their own
shareholders.” See Paul M. Barrett, While Regulators Slept,
N.Y. Times, Aug. 6, 2009, at BR 10. And Judge Richard Pos-
ner, a highly respected jurist and a leading economics expert,
has recently expressed his admiration for Keynesian econom-
ics, reversing a lifetime of reliance on the Chicago School’s
approach. See John Cassidy, Letter from Chicago, The New
Yorker, Jan. 11, 2010, at 28. Thus, a “confident conclusion”
for purposes of quick look and other limited approaches
means, at most, a reasonably confident conclusion that, on
some occasions, may prove to be incorrect. Equally incorrect,
however, may be a conclusion reached by economics experts
after years of study or even a verdict reached by a jury follow-
ing a full-scale trial with the most careful and thorough devel-
opment of a full evidentiary record with the aid of the most
experienced antitrust lawyers and expert witnesses.
Here, we are confident in our conclusion that defendants’
profit sharing agreement creates “a great likelihood of anti-
competitive effects,” and that such effects are not outweighed
or neutralized by any plausible procompetitive benefits. We
are confident that neither the duration of the agreement nor
the fact that the defendants have less than a 100% share of the
market significantly affects the anticompetitive “principal ten-
dency” of the profit sharing agreement. In reaching our con-
clusion, we have considered whether, because the objective of
the agreement was to affect the outcome of a labor dispute
and to bring about a reduction in labor costs, our conclusion
should be altered. Our answer is a definite and unqualified
11948 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
“No.” Finally, although the parties introduced some evidence
to support their respective positions, we do not rely on such
empirical proof in reaching our conclusion; we note, however,
that to the extent that it is relevant, the evidence appears either
to support the conclusion that we reach, or, alternatively, to
add little or nothing of any significance to our analysis.
1.
a.
Defendants entered into an agreement under which they
shared profits with one another according to their historic
shares of the market. As discussed above, the only factors dis-
tinguishing defendants’ arrangement from a profit sharing
agreement that would have constituted a per se violation of
§ 1 of the Sherman Act are the presence in Southern Califor-
nia of a number of supermarkets other than those operated by
defendants, and the indefinite, if limited, term of the agree-
ment. Absent these features, defendants’ scheme would sim-
ply constitute a profit pooling or sharing arrangement akin to
the ones held violative of § 1 in earlier cases, and there would
be no question that the agreement creates a “great likelihood
of anticompetitive effects.” This is apparent from the fact that
when firms sharing profits are the only firms in a market, each
will receive the same portion of the total profits whether it
cuts prices, invests in improving its products or services, or
does nothing to win customers from the other firms; the result
of this lack of competitive pressure is the high likelihood that
prices rise towards monopoly levels or fail to fall with the
same effect. It is for these reasons that the Supreme Court has
said that “[p]ooling of profits pursuant to an inflexible ratio”
is a “§ 1 violation[ ]” that is “plain beyond peradventure.” Cit-
izens Publ’g, 394 U.S. at 135-36.5
5
This effect has been well understood for many years, and was ably
explained well over a hundred years ago by the Kentucky Court of
Appeal, then the highest court in that state, in the following discussion of
a profit sharing arrangement between two steamboat companies:
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11949
The well-recognized effects of profit sharing that we have
set forth above help to guide our discussion. We start from the
premise that the sharing of profits between competitors ordi-
narily has substantial adverse effects on competition. We then
consider whether either of the aspects of the agreement before
us that defendants assert materially distinguish it from ordi-
nary profit sharing arrangements would, in light of the “cir-
cumstances, logic and details of the restraint,” preclude that
agreement from having the anticompetitive effect that would
otherwise occur.
In an ordinary period in which no profit sharing arrange-
ment is in effect, defendants compete with one another and
with a fragmented set of other grocers for customers and
There was a strong stimulation to increase the net profits by
means other than that of popular favor springing out of efficient
steamboat facilities and close attention to the business of ship-
ping for reasonable charges and courteous attention to passengers
at reasonable fare. . . . It is the competition, or fear of competi-
tion, that makes these carriers efficient, attentive, polite, and rea-
sonable in charges. Remove competition, or the fear of it, and
they become extortionate, inattentive, impolite, and negligent. . . .
It is said that neither was bound to charge the same as the other.
That is true; but either could extort with impunity, and the other
would be an equal recipient of the fruit of the extortion. . . . It is
true that their contract did not, in so many words, bind them to
any given charges; but it made it to the interest of each, not only
to charge, but to encourage and sustain the other in charges that
would amount to confiscation. . . . This combination was more
than that of a combination not to take freight or passengers at less
than certain prices. In such case, the combiners have to furnish
adequate means of transportation, and efficient and polite offi-
cers, and confine themselves as nearly as possible to the sum
agreed upon, in order to secure the trade, or a reasonable portion
of it; but here, by reason of the agreement . . . . [i]nefficient
means of transportation, unskilled or inattentive officials, are no
drawback to either boat. Its share of the profits come notwith-
standing.
Anderson v. Jett, 12 S.W. 670, 671 (Ky. 1889).
11950 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
sales, the primary competition being among the defendants.
The fruits of successful competition might accrue both in the
present, as a supermarket makes sales in the current period,
and in the future, as customers won or retained through such
competition return to the store to make more purchases.
Defendants contend that a profit sharing agreement of limited
duration, restricted to the dominant market participants, does
nothing to alter the ordinary incentive structure, and that the
competitive pressure while such a profit sharing agreement is
in effect is no less than the competitive pressure that would
occur in the absence of such an agreement. Having reviewed
their contentions and analyzed all the plausible effects of the
agreement, we are confident in our conclusion that defen-
dants’ profit sharing arrangement removes, or at the least sig-
nificantly reduces, a key source of competitive pressure —
competition among defendants for sales to be made during the
agreement period — without there being any countervailing
pressure sufficient to neutralize or overcome the overwhelm-
ing likelihood of anticompetitive effects. Although it is plau-
sible that the two differences on which defendants rely will
serve to reduce the competitive pressures to a lesser extent
than would a long term agreement among competitors who
control 100% of the market, it is evident that the lessening of
the reduction in competitive pressure will be one of degree
only, and that there is no likelihood whatsoever that the anti-
competitive effects of a profit sharing agreement will be elim-
inated.
Preliminarily, as we have already stated, when an arrange-
ment redistributes all profits on current sales among a group
of competitors according to a predetermined ratio, as defen-
dants’ arrangement does, there is little reason for the individ-
ual firms within the group to compete with one another for
those sales. Thus, we begin our analysis having determined
that there is a high likelihood that defendants’ agreement has
a substantial negative effect on their incentives to compete
with one another for customers in order to make sales during
the period in which the agreement is in effect. Defendants
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11951
nonetheless contend that there is an incentive to compete with
one another for customers during the profit sharing period,
pointing to the indefinite duration of the agreement and to the
possibility that customers who are won or retained through
competition during that period will remain as customers after
the agreement ends. Additionally, they contend that the other
firms in the market will exert competitive pressure on them
sufficient to make up for any loss of competitive pressure
among themselves. We first consider these contentions for a
period of limited duration in general, and then we consider
whether the particular circumstance of the agreement — an
impending labor strike — alters that general analysis.
[8] First, for a profit sharing agreement of limited but
indefinite duration, the incentive to compete for sales and
profits that would occur at some future time would be sub-
stantially less than the ordinary incentive to compete by seek-
ing to attract customers who will patronize the stores starting
immediately and will continue to patronize them in the future
as well. Any decision to engage in competitive behavior in
order to attract customers because they might buy goods at
some future period in which profits would not be shared
would be highly problematic at best. Defendants would face
significant economic disincentives to the incurring of costs by
advertising, discounting and engaging in similarly competi-
tive behavior in order to compete for profits that would be
realized, if at all, only at an indefinite point in the future. The
sales that would produce those future profits might not be
made for six months, or a year, or more. Intervening factors
from the mobility of Southern California customers in gen-
eral, to the willingness of short term customers to experiment
with other vendors, to long term customers’ attachment to
long time vendors, to the occurrence of future sales and pro-
motions, might well render the obtaining of any new custom-
ers of dubious value, and hardly worth the economic cost. By
paying money now for sales that would occur, if at all, only
in the indefinite future, the defendants would incur the ordi-
nary costs of obtaining customers without receiving the ordi-
11952 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
nary benefits that would accrue. Such conduct makes little
economic sense. It is far more likely that, knowing that all of
their chief competitors are in the same position, each of these
once and future competitors would refrain during the profit
sharing period from the expenses necessary to engage in such
competition and count on their fellow defendants to do like-
wise. Thus, we cannot attribute significant weight to defen-
dants’ argument regarding the economic pressure to compete
with each other for future customers during the profit sharing
period, although it is possible that this factor could serve to
reduce to some degree the loss of such pressure that might
occur were the profit sharing agreement of longer duration. In
short, viewing matters most favorably to the defendants, the
anticompetitive effects resulting from an agreement of lim-
ited, if indefinite, duration might be diminished to some
degree but would certainly not be eliminated.
With defendants exerting substantially reduced or no com-
petitive pressure on one another during the profit sharing
period, competition from firms not included in the profit shar-
ing agreement would have to result in an extraordinary
amount of increased competitive pressure to make up for the
loss of the paramount pressure that the defendants ordinarily
exert on each other. This too is highly unlikely. During the
profit sharing period, defendants controlled at least 60% of
the Los Angeles-Long Beach portion of the Southern Califor-
nia market and at least 70% of the San Diego portion, and
between them operated more than 950 stores in the areas
affected by the agreement, a combined presence sufficient to
suggest an ability to significantly affect prices and other out-
comes in the Southern California market.6 Defendants would
6
No precise standard exists for determining when a firm or a group of
firms controls enough of a market that its actions might cause anticompeti-
tive effects. However, the uncontested facts about defendants’ share of the
market and the fragmented nature of the rest of the market together appear
to be sufficient to establish the monopoly power over the market required
for a violation of § 2 of the Sherman Act, a higher standard than is
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11953
be at least partially insulated from competition from other
vendors by virtue of the many and varied locations of their
stores, which for numerous customers would be far more con-
venient to patronize than the markets operated by the other
vendors. Defendants also would be partially insulated from
such competition by the inability of the other vendors to com-
pete effectively as a result of brand recognition (and, indeed,
customer awareness of their existence), limited facilities, con-
tracts with suppliers and staffing commensurate with their
limited historical role in the market; factors that would sub-
stantially curtail the ability of the other vendors to serve addi-
tional customers.7 Those other vendors would no more be able
to increase their capacity, staff, supplies, and brand recogni-
required to find that a firm or firms had sufficient power in the market that
their actions could violate § 1. See Am. Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328
U.S. 781, 797 (1946) (a firm over two-thirds of the market is a monopoly);
Syufy Enter. v. Am. Multicinema, Inc., 793 F.2d 990, 995 (9th Cir. 1986)
(60-69% market share accompanied by a fragmentation of competition
sufficient to show “monopoly power” over a market as required for viola-
tions of § 2 of the Sherman Act); Pac. Coast Agr. Exp. Ass’n v. Sunkist
Growers, Inc., 526 F.2d 1196, 1204 (9th Cir. 1975) (45-70% share of the
market sufficient to show monopoly power where no other competitor had
more than a 12% share of the market); Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Tech-
nical Serv., Inc., 504 U.S. 451, 481 (1992) (“Monopoly power under § 2
requires, of course, something greater than market power under § 1.”); cf.
United States Energy Information Administration, World Crude Oil Pro-
duction, 1960-2008, http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb1105.html (last vis-
ited January 28, 2009) (during the 1970s OPEC never controlled more
than 56% of the world oil market).
7
Another consideration is that a substantial number of alleged competi-
tors product offerings differed substantially from those of defendants,
including box stores selling goods in bulk, such as Costco, retailers selling
a limited selection of products and brands, such as Trader Joe’s, and stores
specializing in organic foods, such as Whole Foods. These markets are by
their nature incapable of competing for much of the business of traditional
supermarkets such as those operated by defendants. Notwithstanding these
obvious facts, Costco, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods were each alleged
by defendants to have placed competitive pressure on them during the
labor dispute.
11954 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
tion overnight than they could immediately open new loca-
tions convenient for defendants’ customers. Nor would they
be inclined to spend money to do so, knowing that the profit-
sharing agreement was of limited duration, and, in fact, could
end at any time. Finally, those other vendors are mainly inde-
pendent of each other, consist of various types of markets, and
would have neither the inclination nor the ability to agree on
a uniform marketing policy that would significantly increase
whatever competitive pressure the totality of those vendors
ordinarily exerts on the defendants. The overwhelming likeli-
hood appears to be that, on the whole, smaller vendors would
do little if anything to alter their marketing practices but
rather would continue on their ordinary course, which would
not serve to increase their economic pressure on defendants
beyond what they ordinarily exert, or attract any substantial
portion of the customers that ordinarily patronize defendants.8
8
Interestingly, economic theory suggests an even stronger negative
effect on competition: it would appear to predict that, at least in the short
run, in a market in which large, dominant firms have an agreement limit-
ing competition amongst themselves, such an agreement will tend to
increase the prices charged by those large firms, and that smaller firms,
rather than increasing whatever economic pressure they ordinarily exert on
those larger firms by charging the lower prices that would obtain under
competitive conditions in order to attract the larger firms’ customers, but
will instead charge higher prices close to those being charged by the larger
firms. See Herbert Hovenkamp, Federal Antitrust Policy § 4.1b (1994).
Firms that pool profits are acting as a kind of cartel, and cartels that do
not contain all the firms in the market are still able to raise prices above
the prices that would be observed in a competitive marketplace, especially
in a short term situation like that present here, in which the fixed costs of
starting a supermarket (leases, employment and product purchasing con-
tracts, signage, etc.) make it unlikely that new firms would enter the mar-
ket to take advantage of the prices that are artificially high due to the
cartel’s collusive behavior. See Dennis W. Carlton & Jeffrey M. Perloff,
Modern Industrial Organization 107-115, 122 (3d ed. 2000). Additionally,
fixing market shares at precartel levels, as defendants essentially did here,
is an “effective technique” for preventing cheating (in the form of compet-
itive behavior) among members of the cartel. See id. at 139-40.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11955
In sum, were a group of defendants with 60% or 70% of the
market share to agree to enter into a profit sharing agreement
for a 6, 12 or 18 month period for ordinary business reasons,
there can be no doubt that neither the length of the period of
the agreement nor the defendants’ less than 100% market
share would change the fact that the agreement, like profit
sharing agreements in general, would be anticompetitive and
would constitute a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Antitrust
Act. Accordingly, there is little to support defendants’ conten-
tions that the term of the agreement or the presence of other
vendors in the market would result in a different outcome
regarding the nature of the agreement than would otherwise
be dictated by prior well-established law.
We find it difficult to believe that any individual with a
rudimentary knowledge of antitrust law would seriously con-
tend that if the defendants agreed to share profits for a limited
period for their mutual economic benefit, there would not be
a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act — at least in the
absence of some extraordinary circumstance. Here, we con-
sider whether the threat of a strike or the strike itself provides
such a circumstance. First, we examine whether the profit
sharing agreement loses its anticompetitive effects when it
becomes operative during the course of a strike or labor dis-
pute. We have no difficulty answering that question: the fact
that the defendants’ agreement provides for profits to be
shared only during a labor dispute and a brief ensuing period
does not alter its inherently anticompetitive nature. Even dur-
ing a strike period, a profit sharing agreement generates a
“great likelihood of anticompetitive effects.” For a vendor, the
principal features of an employee strike are diminished con-
sumer demand, as some customers choose not to cross the
picket lines; a reduced workforce, because some workers at
least are on strike; and a more urgent financial condition, as
fixed costs remain at nonstrike levels, and revenues go down.
While diminished demand, a reduced workforce, and a more
urgent financial condition might affect defendants’ competi-
tive behavior during the strike, these potential effects would
11956 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
occur independent of the existence of a profit sharing agree-
ment.9 The profit sharing agreement itself would have an
additional effect; it would cause defendants to compete even
less during the strike period than they would were there no
profit sharing agreement in effect at that time. Whatever the
baseline circumstance as to competition in any given period,
including a strike period, the existence of the profit sharing
agreement results in a greater likelihood of less competition
than there would otherwise be. That is the simple lesson that
is apparent from a rudimentary knowledge of economics.
Profit sharing necessarily serves to diminish the incentives to
compete below whatever the level of competition would be in
the absence of such an agreement; it is inherently, or as some
courts have said, intuitively, see Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S.
at 781, anticompetitive and has the same, or a similar, effect
on competition during a strike as it would have before the
strike and after it ends. The only real difference is that the
level of competition that would be reduced by the agreement
9
In terms of diminished consumer demand, the standard economic
assumption is that as demand goes down, price goes down as well, either
in absolute terms or by means of increased discounting. A diminished
workforce might be expected to raise prices (or, at least, reduce discount-
ing) by reducing the quantity of merchandise that defendants could sell,
and, correspondingly, the overall supply of such goods in the market. Nei-
ther of these effects changes the basic impact of the agreement: defendants
had little incentive to compete with one another while it was in effect,
because any profits earned on sales to another defendant’s former custom-
ers would simply be redistributed back to the other defendant. A more
urgent financial condition would appear, if anything, to make it less likely
that defendants would commit resources to competing with each other for
customers from whom they would receive profits, if at all, only at some
future date. To any extent that lower demand, lower supply, or strike-
caused financial woes would prompt a defendant to try to win customers
from vendors external to the agreement, the profit sharing agreement
would, as in a nonstrike period, reduce its incentive for doing so: while the
defendant would pay the entire cost (in advertising, improved quality, or
discounting) of luring such customers, it would only retain a fraction of
the benefit generated equal to its prestrike share of the market, and a sub-
stantial number of the new customers might well, for reasons discussed
earlier, be lost by the time the labor dispute and profit sharing ended.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11957
might be lower or higher depending on other circumstances,
such as the existence of the anticipated labor dispute. A strike
or some other unusual circumstance might result in the agree-
ment having a lesser or greater anticompetitive effect than it
would have ordinarily; however, whether greater or lesser, the
net effect in all circumstances would be anticompetitive.
[9] For the reasons explained above, we conclude that “a
great likelihood of anticompetitive effects can be easily ascer-
tained” by examining the agreement in light of prior cases, in
light of its circumstances and details, as well as in light of
logic and rudimentary principles of economics. Here, those
anticompetitive effects are not only substantial, but they result
from an agreement that removes fundamental incentives to
engage in competition for an indefinite period. In short, nei-
ther the fact that there are a number of smaller companies in
the market, the fact that the agreement is of an indefinite
though limited duration, nor the fact that the agreement takes
effect during a strike, warrants a departure from the well-
established rule that profit sharing agreements are anticompe-
titive and violate section 1 of the Sherman Act.
b.
Defendants’ fall back position is that the state lacks empiri-
cal evidence to demonstrate that the effects of the agreement
were anticompetitive in practice. However, neither per se nor
quick look review ordinarily requires empirical evidence of
anticompetitive effects, nor is it required for the combined or
mixed per se/quick look approach that we apply here. As Pro-
fessors Areeda and Hoverkamp explain, “[t]he main differ-
ence between . . . the ‘quick look’ approach and the rule of
reason is that under the former the plaintiff’s case does not
ordinarily include proof of [market] power or anticompetitive
effects.” See Areeda & Hovenkamp, ¶ 1914d, at p. 315; see
also Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 779-81 (explaining that
the “quality of the proof required should vary with the cir-
cumstances;” that “naked restraint[s] on price and output need
11958 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
not be supported by a detailed market analysis in order to”
move to the second step of the quick look analysis and “re-
quire” defendants to produce “some competitive justifica-
tion”; and that not “every case attacking a less obviously
anticompetitive restraint . . . is a candidate for plenary market
examination”) (citations, internal quotation marks omitted)).
So long as the anticompetitive nature of the likely effects of
an agreement is, as a theoretical matter, “obvious,” it is not
necessary for a plaintiff to provide empirical evidence demon-
strating anticompetitive consequences. See Cal. Dental Ass’n,
526 U.S. at 770-71; see also Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n
v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85, 109-
110 (1984). Such a rule is necessary in antitrust cases, where
“reliable proof” of such effects might be “impossible to pro-
duce.” See Areeda & Hovenkamp, ¶ 1901d, at pp. 188-89
(also noting that “in most [antitrust] cases . . . the impact on
output,” which in this case would be diminished sales at
higher prices, “is assessed by inference from the nature of the
agreement and surrounding circumstances, rather than empiri-
cal measurement”).
This is a case in which reliable proof of anticompetitive
effects or their absence through empirical evidence might be
difficult to obtain. Defendants’ own expert explained that
because the profit sharing agreement took effect only during
the labor dispute and both the agreement and the labor dispute
might affect defendants’ pricing decisions, the data required
to best distinguish between the effects of the strike and those
of the agreement and determine whether and how the agree-
ment affected competition between the defendants does not
exist. See Declaration of Thomas R. McCarthy at ¶ 47.
[10] This is, more important, a case in which the anticom-
petitive nature of the restraint is obvious. As discussed above,
by the terms of the agreement any defendant that earns profits
above its historic market share is required to give those addi-
tional profits to the other defendants. Because a defendant
may not retain any profits that it made from competing with
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11959
the other defendants and receives a proportionate share of
whatever profits those other defendants make from competing
with it, the profit sharing agreement plainly reduces the com-
petitive pressure among defendants for sales whenever it is in
effect, during the strike or otherwise. To justify their conduct,
defendants rely not on the neutral or positive effect on compe-
tition arising out of their agreement, but on other sources of
competitive pressure — increased competition from other
vendors and competition with one another for post-strike busi-
ness. As explained above, it is wholly implausible that those
factors would be sufficient to overcome the reduction in com-
petitive pressure that necessarily results from the profit shar-
ing agreement. Defendants’ agreement plainly removes a
significant source of competitive pressure without giving rise
to any comparable counter-source to replace it.10 Accordingly,
10
The obviously anticompetitive nature of defendants’ profit sharing
agreement in a traditional market setting distinguishes it from the restraint
in California Dental Association. Here, there is a long history of adjudg-
ing profit sharing agreements to be anticompetitive and of demonstrating
the validity of that conclusion. The unique limits on price and quality
advertising by dentists that were at issue in California Dental Association
might have been thought by some to reduce incentives to compete over
price or quality, because without such advertising it would be difficult for
a dentist to inform potential customers about his advantages over his com-
petitors, and thus, lowering his prices or expending resources to improve
his quality might simply have reduced his profits from existing customers.
However, the Court reasoned that the nature of the market for “profes-
sional services” such as dental care was unique and that the circumstances
made it difficult to compare services across providers and to verify price
and service information, meaning that price and quality advertising might
have been misleading, and misleading advertising itself poses dangers to
competition. See Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 771-72. Accordingly, the
Court concluded, that because of the “professional context,” it was not
implausible that, as a theoretical matter, the restriction on price advertising
had either a positive effect or no effect on competition. See id. at 774-75.
The Court emphasized that theoretical claims of anticompetitive effects
that are not evident or established in antitrust law must be carefully con-
sidered and clearly explained in order to justify shifting the burden to
defendants to show some procompetitive effect. See id. at 775 n.12. Here,
the subjective factors that the Court found were critical to the sale of pro-
11960 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
California has carried its burden by demonstrating the exis-
tence of a great likelihood of anticompetitive effects.
Although given the nature of the restraint at issue in the
case, California was not required to adduce empirical evi-
dence of anticompetitive effects, the empirical evidence
before us supports its contentions or is, at the least, of no sub-
stantial consequence. Defendants acknowledge diminished
competitive behavior such as discounting and advertising dur-
ing the period in which the profit sharing agreement was in
effect. This, in all likelihood, resulted in at least some
increase in, or some failure to reduce, the prices charged to
the consumers. See Declaration of Thomas R. McCarthy,
Backup to ex. 7A; Declaration of Steven Lawler at ¶ 8; Decla-
ration of Carla Simpson at ¶ 6-7; Declaration of Charles Ack-
erman at ¶ 15-19. They explain this change in behavior by
attributing it to the lack of manpower created by the strike,
rather than to the profit sharing agreement. However, their
expert, who relied on this explanation, performed no regres-
sion or other statistical analyses, which are typical means of
determining the effects of multiple variables, such as the labor
dispute and the profit sharing agreement, on a single depen-
dent variable, such as competitive behavior by defendants.
See, e.g., Hemmings v. Tidyman’s, Inc., 285 F.3d 1174, 1183-
84 & n. 9 (9th Cir. 2002). Instead, he simply looked at limited
data from Albertson’s and declared that Alberton’s “did a lot
of discounting during the strike,” and that it increased its use
fessional services do not exist. Economic theory as well as a practical
analysis of the factual circumstances make it clear that there is a high like-
lihood that the profit sharing agreement had anticompetitive effects.
Unlike California Dental Association, there is a clear theoretical basis for
concluding that a profit sharing agreement would have anticompetitive
effects, and, again unlike California Dental Association, there is no plausi-
ble basis, theoretical or otherwise, for concluding that the profit sharing
agreement had procompetitive effects, see Section IV.2 infra. Accord-
ingly, the burden to demonstrate evidence of the restraints procompetitive
effects falls on defendants, who do not meet it in any way.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11961
of certain discounting methods. See Declaration of Thomas R.
McCarthy at ¶ 51-53. Because his analysis lacks a discussion
of how much discounting Albertson’s would have done absent
the profit sharing agreement, it is beside the point. Califor-
nia’s expert, who did perform regressions, asserted in his
deposition that those regressions revealed that competition
between defendants during the strike was harmed by the profit
sharing agreement. He further noted that Vons raised its
prices in the face of the strike and a dramatic drop in demand
for its products, exactly the opposite of the lower prices that
are expected when demand drops in a competitive market-
place.11
11
Defendants’ evidence purporting to show that employees charged with
pricing during the dispute did not know about the profit sharing agreement
and took no action because of it, which was relied upon by the district
court, also fails to provide support for their contentions. Their evidence on
this point is both skeletal and somewhat dubious. Defendants do not come
close to demonstrating that all employees with power over pricing were
ignorant of the agreement or took no action because of it. See, e.g., Decla-
ration of Bryan Davis at ¶ 3 (Albertson’s employee describing himself as
responsible only for the prices in a discreet category of groceries); Decla-
ration of Carla Simpson at ¶ 2 (Safeway employee describing herself as
having responsibility only for implementing pricing established by another
department). Moreover, early in the strike the Los Angeles Times pub-
lished a front page article revealing that the chains had agreed to share the
financial burden of the strike. See Nancy Cleeland & Melinda Fulmer, In
Tactical Move, Union Pulls Pickets From Ralphs, L.A. Times, Nov. 1,
2003, at A1. More important, it would defeat entirely the efficiency goals
underlying the existence of per se, quick look, and “meet for the case”
analysis if defendants could preclude a summary finding, and proceed to
full rule of reason analysis, simply by asserting that the employees in
charge of pricing did not know about the profit sharing. Such assertions
are easy to make, while proving or disproving who knew what, and
whether the knowledge of a particular individual had any effect on
whether the company acted in a competitive manner, would require
exactly the sort of onerous and costly production of evidence that sum-
mary review is meant to avoid. In any case, as noted above, the quick look
inquiry is a probabilistic one: in order to place the burden on defendants
to demonstrate that the agreement had a procompetitive effect, California
need prove only that defendants’ agreement to share profits created a great
likelihood of anticompetitive effects. Accordingly, even if the anticompe-
11962 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
Given the obviously anticompetitive nature of defendants’
profit sharing agreement, no empirical data about the effects
of the agreement is necessary for “an enquiry meet for [this]
case.” Nonetheless, we have reviewed the empirical evidence
in the record for purposes of completeness. Doing so has only
increased our certainty that defendants’ agreement generated
a great likelihood of anticompetitive effects, that it is implau-
sible that such effects could be overcome or neutralized by the
conduct of defendants or others during the term of the agree-
ment, and that requiring a full rule of reason inquiry would be
contrary to the efficient and effective implementation of our
antitrust laws.
2.
Where, as here, a “great likelihood of anticompetitive
effects can easily be ascertained,” the burden of proof is
shifted to the defendant “to show empirical evidence of pro-
competitive effects.” See Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 770,
775 n.12; Areeda & Hovenkamp, ¶ 1914d1, p. 315-16 (when
“the restraint is of such a character that an anticompetitive
effect may be presumed,” then “the only tolerance permitted
to the defendant is to show” procompetitive effects). Procom-
petitive effects include efficiency gains, the development or
improvement of products, and other benefits to consumers
and society. See Areeda & Hovenkamp, ¶ 1912c2, p. 289. In
California Dental Association, for instance, the Supreme
Court saw a plausible procompetitive justification for the den-
tist association’s restrictions limiting price and quality adver-
tising in the potential of such restrictions to improve
consumer information by eliminating false and misleading
advertising. See Cal. Dental Ass’n, 526 U.S. at 771-772.
titive effects had not come to pass because certain employees did not learn
of the agreement or did not correctly calculate where the company’s inter-
ests lay in light of the agreement, that fact would be immaterial to the
result of our inquiry.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11963
Here, we come to defendants’ real defense. They assert that
conduct that serves to reduce the cost of labor serves a pro-
competitive purpose, such as may excuse otherwise anticom-
petitive behavior. They contend that the procompetitive
benefit of their agreement is that it increased their chances of
winning the labor dispute and reducing the wages and benefits
they would be required to pay to their employees, which in
turn would increase their ability to lower prices and compete
more effectively with other companies. See Declaration of
Thomas R. McCarthy at ¶ 10.
As California points out, the chain of contingencies linking
the profit sharing agreement to reduced prices for consumer
purchases renders any such procompetitive benefits purely
speculative. More important, driving down compensation to
workers is not a benefit to consumers cognizable under our
laws as a “procompetitive” benefit. “One of the important
social advantages of competition mandated by the antitrust
laws is that it rewards the most efficient producer and thus
ensures the optimum use of our economic resources. This
result, as Congress [has] recognized, is not achieved by creat-
ing a situation in which manufacturers compete on the basis
of who pays the lowest wages.” United Mine Workers v. Pen-
nington, 381 U.S. 676, 725 (1965) (Goldberg, J., dissenting
and concurring); see also 15 U.S.C. § 17 (“The labor of a
human being is not a commodity or an article of commerce”).
Depressing wages is not of societal benefit; it simply harms
working people and their families, a significant part of the
group that has come to be known as “the middle class.”
In any event, the defendants’ argument is wholly unpersua-
sive in light of our nation’s labor laws and policies. It is a pri-
mary objective of our nation’s laws to protect the rights and
interests of working persons, and to enable them to obtain a
fair and decent wage through collective action. Reducing
workers’ wages and benefits is hardly an objective that would
justify a violation of our antitrust laws or a benefit so substan-
tial to the public as to overcome the deleterious consequences
11964 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
of anticompetitive conduct. We see no reason, even if we had
the authority to do so, to set aside the ordinary principles gov-
erning antitrust law in order to unbalance the carefully devel-
oped legal structures relating to our laws governing collective
bargaining; nor do we see any reason or justification for
assuming the function of increasing the economic power of
employers to the disadvantage of their employees. To the
extent that anticompetitive conduct is exempted from the
application of our antitrust laws in order to facilitate the oper-
ation of labor/management processes, that is reflected in the
implied labor exemption that we discuss in Section III infra.
Accordingly, we conclude that defendants have not offered,
much less demonstrated, any way in which their agreement
generated procompetitive effects.
3.
[11] Defendants have put forward no plausible procompe-
titive effects to overcome or neutralize the great likelihood of
anticompetitive effects that would result from the implemen-
tation of their profit sharing agreement. That likelihood is evi-
dent from a plain reading of the agreement’s terms, an
examination of the ample case law regarding profit sharing
agreements, a rudimentary knowledge of economics, and our
analysis of the “circumstances, details, and logic” of the
agreement. In the absence of a procompetitive justification
that outweighs the likelihood of substantial anticompetitive
effects, we conclude with confidence and certainty that the
profit sharing agreement violates § 1 of the Sherman Act, and
that requiring California to engage in a full rule of reason
review would be contrary to the fundamental policies underly-
ing our antitrust laws.
III.
Having determined that defendants’ agreement violates sec-
tion 1 of the Sherman Act because of the great likelihood that
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11965
its implementation would result in anticompetitive effects, we
must next consider defendants’ principal contention — that
because their agreement was entered into in anticipation of a
labor dispute, and constitutes part of their method of dealing
with such a dispute, it is excused from the application of the
antitrust laws by virtue of the nonstatutory labor exemption.
As we have previously noted, this contention lies at the heart
of defendants’ defense of their obviously anticompetitive
agreement; if that agreement is to be excused, it must be
because of its role in the labor dispute.
Congress encourages collective bargaining and the forma-
tion of labor unions as part of our national labor policy. See,
e.g., Phoenix Elec. Co. v. Nat’l Elec. Contractors Ass’n, 81
F.3d 858, 860 (9th Cir. 1996). These processes involve and
result in conduct that conflicts, at some level, with our anti-
trust laws, which bar restraints on competition. See Areeda &
Hovenkamp, ¶ 255a, p. 167 (explaining that labor unions can
be construed as combinations in restraint of trade). The his-
tory of Congress’s efforts to reconcile these two basic
national policies, and its struggle with the federal courts in
doing so, plays an essential part in our analysis here.
In the early days of the Sherman Act, courts applied its pro-
hibitions to labor union activity, most frequently by enjoining
such conduct. See United States v. Hutcheson et al., 312 U.S.
219, 229-30 (1941); see also Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274
(1908). Congress attempted to limit such judicial applications
of the Sherman Act through the Clayton Act, which “was
designed to equalize before the law the position of working-
men and employer as industrial combatants.” See Hutcheson,
312 U.S. at 229 (quoting Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deer-
ing, 254 U.S. 443, 484 (1921) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)). In
section 20 of the Clayton Act, Congress barred courts from
issuing injunctions against a set of enumerated labor union
practices and from treating those practices as illegal. See 29
U.S.C. § 52. However, in Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deer-
ing, 254 U.S. 443 (1921), the Supreme Court again limited
11966 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
Congress’s actions, this time by restricting the reach of sec-
tion 20 to activities directed against an employer by its own
employees, thus reading into the Clayton Act “the very beliefs
which that Act was designed to remove,” see Hutcheson, 312
U.S. at 230, and, in essence, “swe[eping] away” section 20,
see Pennington, 381 U.S. at 702-03. Having failed to succeed
in its first few efforts, Congress responded even more directly
to the actions of what it perceived to be an anti-labor, anti-
union federal judiciary with the Norris-LaGuardia Act. See 29
U.S.C. § 101 et seq. The aim of that Act was “to restore the
broad purpose which Congress thought it had formulated in
the Clayton Act but which was frustrated . . . by unduly
restrictive judicial construction.” See Hutcheson, 312 U.S. at
235-36. Together, the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts
finally managed to overcome the resistance of the federal
courts and exempted trade union activities from review under
the Sherman Act. See id. at 236.
[12] The Acts, nevertheless, explicitly immunized only
arrangements and agreements among employees, and did not
extend protection to those involving both unions and employ-
ers. See Pennington, 381 U.S. at 662. The courts, having
become more sympathetic to collective bargaining, then
stepped into the breach, and implied a nonstatutory labor
exemption to shield from antitrust review basic arrangements
involving labor and management. The logic behind the
exemption is simple: “it would be difficult, if not impossible,
to require groups of employers and employees to bargain
together, but at the same time to forbid them to make among
themselves and with each other any of the competition-
restricting agreements potentially necessary to make the pro-
cess work or its results mutually acceptable.”12 See Brown v.
12
The use of the term “any” by Justice Breyer demonstrates how diffi-
cult it is to write sentences that do not contain ambiguities. Clearly, the
former professor meant the sentence to state that the law could not logi-
cally forbid all competition-restricting agreements rather than that it could
not logically forbid any one such agreement, no matter how injurious the
antitrust violation and how questionable the labor law interest. Fortu-
nately, in Brown the message is clear from the sentences surrounding the
one in question.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11967
Pro Football, Inc., 518 U.S. 231, 237 (1996) (emphasis in
original). Accommodating “the congressional policy favoring
collective bargaining” and “the congressional policy favoring
free competition in business markets requires that some
union-employer agreements be accorded a limited non-
statutory exemption from antitrust sanctions.” Connell Constr.
Co., Inc. v. Plumbers Local 100, 421 U.S. 616, 622 (1975).
The Supreme Court most recently discussed the nonstatutory
labor exemption in Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., in which it
held for the first time that an agreement among a group of
employers might, under narrow circumstances, be entitled to
an exemption from the antitrust laws. In that case, the Court
held that the National Football League’s unilateral imposition
of certain terms and conditions, after reaching an impasse in
bargaining with the Players Association, constituted a well-
recognized procedure in the collective bargaining process and
was therefore exempt from antitrust review. See Brown, 518
U.S. at 234-35.
A.
Not every restraint on competition that employers and
employees might impose through the collective bargaining
process is immune from antitrust review. See Pennington, 381
U.S. at 665-666 (holding that the nonstatutory labor exemp-
tion does not immunize agreement between unions and large
coal producers to impose higher wages on small producers
with the intent to drive those producers out of the market and
thus limit output and raise prices); id. at 663 (no exemption
would be appropriate “[i]f the [union] in this case, in order to
protect its wage scale by maintaining employer income, had
presented a set of prices at which the mine operators would
be required to sell their coal”); Local Union No. 189, Amalga-
mated Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co., Inc., 381 U.S. 676, 693
(1965) (“an effort by the unions to protect one group of
employers from competition by another . . . is conduct that is
not exempt from the Sherman Act”); cf. Connell Constr., 421
U.S. at 622-23 (refusing to immunize under the labor exemp-
11968 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
tion a union attempt to organize mechanical subcontractors in
the construction industry by forcing the general contractors
who were consumers of the subcontractors’ services to pur-
chase services only from union subcontractors, thus “exclud[-
ing] those nonunion subcontractors from a portion of the
market, even if their competitive advantages were not derived
from substandard wages and working conditions but rather
from more efficient operating methods”).
In Brown, the Court explained that the “implicit [(nonstatu-
tory labor)] antitrust exemption . . . applies where needed to
make the collective bargaining process work.” Brown, 518
U.S. at 234. Although it “left the precise contours of the
exemption undefined,” Clarett v. Nat’l Football League, 369
F.3d 124, 138 (2d Cir. 2004) (per Sotomayor, Circuit Judge),
the balance of the Court’s opinion nevertheless provides guid-
ance as to the meaning of this standard, at least as far as mul-
tiemployer agreements are concerned. The Court stated that
multiemployer bargaining groups need to be able to impose
terms in the face of an impasse unilaterally. See id. at 239-
242. It reasoned that without an exemption for such actions,
employers involved in multiemployer bargaining would be in
a no-win position in the event of an impasse, with individual
employer members facing possible charges for labor law vio-
lations (unfair labor practices) if they imposed terms that
diverged significantly from the multiemployer group’s last
joint offer, and possible antitrust law violations (based on
similarity of action and a history of conversations between the
parties) if they individually imposed terms similar to that last
offer. See id. at 241-42; see also id. at 244-45. Collective bar-
gaining, the Court added, cannot be said to be working in cir-
cumstances in which employers are exposed to liability for
simply participating in multiemployer bargaining and employ-
ing historic and well-established bargaining tactics. See
Brown, 518 U.S. at 240. Multiemployer bargaining, the Court
noted, is an important variant of collective bargaining that has
long played a significant and positive role in our national
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11969
labor policy. See id.; see also NLRB v. Truck Drivers Local
Union No. 449 (Buffalo Linen), 353 U.S. 87, 94-96 (1957).
In determining that it was appropriate to apply the exemp-
tion to the NFL clubs’ group action, the Court singled out two
aspects of that joint conduct. First, it explained that “[l]abor
law itself regulates directly, and considerably, the kind of
behavior here at issue — the post-impasse imposition of a
proposed employment term concerning a mandatory subject
of bargaining.” Brown, 518 U.S. at 238. It noted that the
National Labor Relations Board and the courts have devel-
oped a set of “carefully circumscribed conditions” limiting the
nature of the terms that can be imposed by employers post-
impasse and restricting the imposition of such terms to
instances in which the collective bargaining proceedings lead-
ing up to the impasse were “free of any unfair labor practice.”
See id. at 238-39. These carefully developed restrictions, the
Court emphasized, “reflect the fact that impasse and an
accompanying implementation of proposals constitute an inte-
gral part of the bargaining process.” See id. at 239.
Second, the Court explained that “[m]ultiemployer bargain-
ing itself is a well-established, important, pervasive method of
collective-bargaining” and that the conduct at issue in the case
—“the joint implementation of proposed terms after
impasse[ — ]is a familiar practice in the context of multiem-
ployer bargaining.” See id. at 239-40.
[13] “The upshot” of the Court’s discussion, as it put it,
was that in multiemployer bargaining, as in all other bargain-
ing, the post-impasse imposition of a proposed employment
term concerning a mandatory subject of collective bargaining
is exempt under the nonstatutory labor exemption, because
such conduct “plays a significant role in a collective-
bargaining process that itself constitutes an important part of
the Nation’s industrial relations system.” Id. at 240. Where
the conduct at issue plays such a traditional role in collective
bargaining, an exemption from the antitrust laws is appropri-
11970 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
ate. An exemption, the Court said, avoids “requir[ing] anti-
trust courts to answer a host of important” labor law
questions, such as “practical questions about how collective
bargaining over wages, hours, and working conditions,” man-
datory subjects for such bargaining, “is to proceed.” See id. at
240-41. Hence, in Brown, the exemption was “needed to
make the collective bargaining process work,” id. at 234,
because “to permit antitrust liability [would have] threa-
ten[ed] to introduce instability and uncertainty into the
collective-bargaining process,” with respect to core labor-
management issues to which the NLRB, and the courts
reviewing such issues, have habitually applied well-
established principles of labor law, see id. at 242.
In contrast, defendants’ profit sharing conduct has not tra-
ditionally been regulated under labor law principles, nor does
it raise issues either on its face or in its practical implementa-
tion that are suitable for resolution as a matter of labor law,
by the NLRB, or by the courts that review or implement
Board rulings. There is no well-defined set of NLRB rules or
principles that would govern the circumstances in which such
conduct would be permissible, and the conduct does not
involve any mandatory subject of collective bargaining. Per-
haps most important, profit sharing is not “needed to make the
collective bargaining process work.” To the contrary, collec-
tive bargaining has worked and does work quite well from the
standpoint of employers without the need to engage in such
basic violations of the antitrust system.
Profit sharing implicates the core concerns of the antitrust
laws, and such concerns are best resolved by courts steeped
in antitrust law and its principles. Such is the historic means
by which profit sharing, market allocation and price fixing
agreements have been adjudicated. The only relationship of
profit sharing agreements to labor matters is the possibility
that they would unbalance the existing, carefully drawn pro-
cess, and strengthen the hand of employers in labor disputes
by means that would otherwise violate well-established anti-
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11971
trust policies — means that have not been historically autho-
rized for use as part of the collective bargaining process.
It is the labor law practices essential to collective bargain-
ing that the nonstatutory exemption is designed to protect.
Profit sharing is not such a practice. Unlike post-impasse
imposition of terms or conditions of employment, profit shar-
ing is not a subject that has been regulated or adjudicated by
the NLRB or by courts applying labor law principles. Labor
law’s focus is on “protecting the exercise by workers of full
freedom of association [and] self-organization” and promot-
ing industrial harmony by “encouraging the practice and pro-
cedure of collective bargaining” and “prevent[ing] any person
from engaging in any unfair labor practice . . . .” See 29
U.S.C. §§ 151 & 160; see also 29 U.S.C. § 159 (unfair labor
practices include, inter alia, interfering with employees’
rights to organize and bargain collectively).
Labor law is utterly unconcerned by, and contains no provi-
sions for dealing with, the preservation of the benefits of a
competitive marketplace for consumers, or protecting con-
sumers from competition-restraining arrangements such as
defendants’ profit sharing agreement. That is the job of the
antitrust enforcers. As the Court has explained, “Congress has
not authorized the NLRB to police, modify, or invalidate
collective-bargaining contracts aimed at regulating competi-
tion or to insulate bargaining agreements from antitrust
attack.” See Fed. Mar. Com’n v. Pac. Mar. Ass’n, 435 U.S.
40, 61 (1978).
That defendants’ profit sharing agreement lies completely
outside the matters regulated by labor law is crucial to the
question whether the antitrust exemption should apply for at
least two reasons. First, if immunized by the exemption,
defendants’ conduct, which restrains competition and harms
consumers in violation of our antitrust regime, would go com-
pletely unregulated: it would not be subject to review by any
authority familiar or concerned with the principles of antitrust
11972 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
law, and would not present any traditional issues of labor law
that the NLRB was “authorized to police.” Id. This is in stark
contrast to Brown, in which defendants’ conduct presented a
traditional labor law issue that was “carefully circumscribed”
by fundamental principles established by the NLRB and regu-
lated by the Board as a matter of labor law. See Brown, 518
U.S. at 238. Second, and again in contrast to Brown, the deter-
mination that defendants’ agreement is unlawful does not “re-
quire [this] court[ ] to answer a host of important practical
questions about how collective bargaining over wages, hours,
and working conditions is to proceed.” See id. at 240-41.
Rather it requires only that we consider traditional issues of
economics and antitrust law, such as the anticompetitive
effects of a profit-sharing agreement when the term of the
agreement is of a limited duration and the parties’ control of
the market is less than 100%. See Section II.
To conclude that defendants’ profit sharing agreement vio-
lates § 1 of the Sherman Act does not require us to answer
any fundamental labor law questions that are traditionally
within the purview of the NLRB. The unlawfulness of defen-
dants’ profit sharing agreement has nothing whatsoever to do
with the procedures for collective bargaining, and nothing,
moreover, to do with the mandatory subjects of collective bar-
gaining negotiations, such as wages, hours and working con-
ditions. See id. at 250 (noting as a basis for its decision that
the Brown defendants’ conduct concerned mandatory subjects
of negotiation). Instead, our decision has everything to do
with the anticompetitive effect of particular conduct on cus-
tomers and markets.
In terms of whether defendants’ conduct is a familiar and
well-established practice in multiemployer bargaining, no
extended discussion is necessary. The implementation of pro-
posed terms after an impasse is, as the Court explained, “an
integral part of the collective bargaining process,” and it
“plays a significant role” in the multiemployer bargaining
process, propositions for which the Court cites decades’ worth
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11973
of cases. See id. at 239-40. Profit sharing by employers has no
history in connection with multiemployer bargaining and has
proved necessary neither to the development of that process
nor to the collective bargaining process in general. Because
such profit sharing is not, and has not been, a necessary part
of collective bargaining, there is no danger that “permit[ting]
antitrust liability” in this case would “threaten[ ] to introduce
instability and uncertainty into the collective-bargaining pro-
cess.” See id. at 242. Rather, the process would continue
unchanged.
[14] Defendants’ profit sharing arrangement lies outside
the basic concerns of labor law, and such arrangements have
never played a role in the collective bargaining process. Such
agreements, which damage competition between firms that
sell products and services to consumers, are the core concern
of the antitrust laws. See Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union
No. 3, Int’l Bhd. of Elec. Workers, 325 U.S. 797, 809 (1945)
(“The primary objective of all the Anti-trust legislation has
been to preserve business competition . . . .”). This in itself
gives strong reason to conclude that the nonstatutory exemp-
tion does not apply in the instant case.13
[15] A related consideration that militates strongly against
affording the profit sharing agreement protection under the
nonstatutory exemption is that it constitutes a direct restraint
on competition between firms in the market to sell goods and
13
The fact that the nonstatutory labor exemption is a court-created doc-
trine that operates to limit the application of antitrust statutes created by
Congress requires such a consideration. The nonstatutory exemption’s
authority derives wholly by implication from Congress’s enactment of the
statutory exemption. It thus reaches no further than is necessary to accom-
modate the intent underlying that enactment, and must be reconciled with
Congress’s other explicit enactments. See Allen Bradley Co., 325 U.S. at
809-810 (“It would be a surprising thing if Congress, in order to prevent
a misapplication of [antitrust] legislation to [collective bargaining], had
bestowed upon [parties to collective bargaining] complete and unreview-
able authority . . . to frustrate its primary objective.”).
11974 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
services to consumers (the “product market”). The Court has
consistently affirmed that the nonstatutory exemption has no
application to agreements in which the “the restraint on the
product market is direct and immediate.” See Pennington, 381
U.S. at 663-664; Connell Constr., 421 U.S. at 622-23; see
also Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., 50 F.3d 1041, 1051 (D.C.
Cir. 1995) aff’d, Brown, 518 U.S. at 250; Am. Steel Erectors,
Inc. v. Local Union No. 7, Int’l Ass’n of Bridge, Structural,
Ornamental & Reinforcing Iron Workers, 536 F.3d 68, 79 (1st
Cir. 2008); Mid-America Reg’l Bargaining Ass’n v. Will
County Carpenters Dist. Council, 675 F.2d 881, 893 (7th Cir.
1982); Areeda & Hovenkamp, ¶ 257a, p. 225. In Brown, there
was no contention, nor could there have been, that consumers
would be hurt by the imposition of particular salary and other
working conditions on the members of the NFL development
squads, nor by any determination regarding the composition
of such squads. Here, the agreement creates a great likelihood
of direct harm to the public through reduced competition
between defendants for sales during the course of the strike.
In view of the type of consequences that flow from the imple-
mentation of the agreement at issue here, as well as the other
factors we discuss above, we conclude that the implied non-
statutory exemption is not applicable in this case.
Defendants’ claims as to the necessity for their agreement
as a matter of collective bargaining do nothing to change that
conclusion. Essentially, defendants seek an exemption in
order to permit them to engage in unlawful conduct in order
to help them defeat their employees’ collective bargaining
representatives who are engaging in perfectly lawful conduct.
Defendants claim no purpose for their agreement beyond
strengthening their hands in a labor dispute, so as to allow
them to reduce the economic impact of a strike, a lawful tool
of collective bargaining, and ultimately to be able to limit the
wages and benefits of their employees. They do not assert that
they could not reach an agreement with the unions without
violating the antitrust laws — in fact, the history of multiem-
ployer collective bargaining is to the contrary. Defendants
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11975
assert only that the agreement would help them protect them-
selves against whipsaw tactics by the unions, legitimate tac-
tics in which unions are permitted to engage under our labor
laws. [See Gray Brief at 6-8.] Beyond the fact that the profit
sharing agreement was written to take effect whether or not
the unions used such tactics, defendants had several options
for countering such tactics, none of which is contrary to the
antitrust laws: for example, collectively locking out workers
and replacing them with nonunion workers, see Buffalo Linen,
353 U.S. at 96-97; see also 29 U.S.C. §§ 158(d), 173(c), 176
& 178 (specifically contemplating lockouts as an expected
and integral part of the collective bargaining system), and pur-
chasing strike insurance, see W.P. Kennedy v. Long Island R.
R. Co., 319 F.2d 366 (2nd Cir. 1963).14 These responses have
sufficed for decades to ensure that multiemployer collective
bargaining works efficiently without the need to engage in
violations of the antitrust laws that would harm competition
and consumers in the very way that those laws are designed
to prevent. The profit sharing agreement for which the defen-
dants now seek a nonstatutory exemption, accordingly, is
clearly not an agreement that is “needed” for the operation of
the collective bargaining process. Brown, 518 U.S. at 234.
To the extent that defendants argue that other responses
would leave them open to economic pressure from the unions,
the answer is obvious: the collective bargaining process con-
templates that the respective parties will incur economic pres-
sures and that those pressures will lead to a resolution of the
dispute. Labor unions face the severe economic pressure that
14
The difference between the strike insurance in Kennedy and defen-
dants’ profit sharing agreement is that the firms using strike insurance in
Kennedy paid a fixed amount (as opposed to an amount that varied with
revenues) for protection and that protection covered only fixed costs, such
as property taxes, pension payments and interest charges on debt. See W.P.
Kennedy, 319 F.2d at 369. Unlike defendants under their profit sharing
scheme, individual firms purchasing such insurance would retain any
increase in profits earned during the labor dispute and suffer fully any
reduction.
11976 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
a lockout of its members causes. Employers face the eco-
nomic pressures that a loss of profits may produce. See, e.g.,
NLRB v. Ins. Agents’ Int’l Union, 361 U.S. 477, 489 (1960)
(noting “the legitimacy of the use of economic weapons, fre-
quently having the most serious effect upon individual work-
ers and productive enterprises, to induce one party to come to
the terms desired by the other”). The purpose of the nonstatu-
tory exemption is not to suspend the consumer protections
afforded by the antitrust laws in order to shift the balance in
economic pressures that the parties may bring to bear in the
course of labor disputes. That balance results from the now
well-established functioning of the bargaining process — a
process the operation of which has been authorized by Con-
gress after balancing the rights of employers and their
employees, and adopting a system it deemed fair to both
sides. A surfeit of concern for employer strength in labor dis-
putes would be contrary to Congress’s intent to ensure that
employees have sufficient strength to negotiate with their
employers. See 29 U.S.C. § 102 (titled “Public policy in labor
matters declared”); see also Pennington, 381 U.S. at 704 n.4
(“The purpose of the [Norris-LaGuardia Act] is to protect the
rights of labor . . . .”) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 72-669, at 3
(1932)); Hutcheson, 312 U.S. at 235 (same). Nothing in
Brown casts doubt on this longstanding policy: the Court in
Brown afforded protection to the employer agreement not to
increase the bargaining power of employers, but to permit the
operation of the customary practices attendant to multiem-
ployer collective bargaining, with the beneficial effects that
its existence has on the parties and the general public. See
Brown, 518 U.S. at 241.
B.
For their part, defendants read Brown as a watershed event,
arguing that it created a rule under which any employer con-
duct that occurs in the context of a collective bargaining dis-
pute is insulated from antitrust review by the nonstatutory
labor exemption. They also argue that as part of this general
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11977
expansion of the exemption, Brown abandoned the distinction
between agreements that operate only in the labor market,
which have been treated historically as exempt, and those that
also affect competition in the product market, which are gen-
erally subject to the antitrust laws.
Defendants misread Brown and massively overstate its
change to the nonstatutory labor exemption doctrine. It is true
that Brown was the first case to apply the exemption to an
agreement between employers alone, as opposed to an agree-
ment between employers and employees.15 See Brown, 518
U.S. at 238; see also Areeda & Hovenkamp, ¶ 257b2, p. 233.
However, the Court understood and explained this application
of the exemption as continuous and consistent with the “ratio-
nale” of the exemption as employed in previous cases, see
Brown, 518 U.S. at 243; see also Brown, 50 F.3d at 1050, and
it built its nonstatutory exemption analysis entirely on the
foundation of those cases, see Brown, 518 U.S. at 235-37.
Additionally, at no point did Brown indicate any intention
to erase “the line between the product market and the labor
market,” which “the Court has consistently sought to draw”
when applying the nonstatutory exemption. See Brown, 50
15
By applying the exemption to an employer only agreement, the Court
appears to have abrogated the Mackey test, which was previously the rule
in this Circuit for determining when the nonstatutory exemption applied.
See Phoenix Elec, Co. v. Nat’l Elec. Contractors Ass’n, 81 F.3d 858, 861
(9th Cir. 1996); Cont’l Mar. of San Francisco, Inc. v. Pac. Coast Metal
Trades Dist. Council, 817 F. 2d 1391 (9th Cir. 1987). The Mackey test
allowed for application of the nonstatutory labor exemption only where (1)
“the restraint on trade primarily affects only the parties to the collective
bargaining relationship”; (2) “the agreement sought to be exempted con-
cerns a mandatory subject of collective bargaining”; and (3) “the agree-
ment sought to be exempted is the product of bona fide arm’s-length
bargaining” between the unions and employers. Mackey v. Nat’l Football
League, 543 F.2d 606, 614 (8th Cir. 1976). While the first two conditions
obtained in Brown, the third did not, because an employer-only agreement
is manifestly not the product of arm’s length bargaining between unions
and employers.
11978 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
F.3d at 1051 (citations omitted); see also Section III.A supra.
Nor would there have been any reason for the Court to do so.
Brown presented only the narrow question whether the non-
statutory exemption applied “to an agreement among several
employers bargaining together to implement after impasse the
terms of their last best good-faith wage offer,” Brown, 518
U.S. at 238, conduct that, the Court emphasized, “grew out of,
and was directly related to, the lawful operation of the bar-
gaining process”; “involved a matter that the parties were
required to negotiate collectively”; and “concerned only the
parties to the collective-bargaining relationship,” see id. at
250. Put another way, the agreement at issue in Brown had a
direct effect only on the market for labor, and affected only
the parties involved in a collective bargaining relationship
regulated by the labor laws. Brown in no way suggests that
the nonstatutory labor exemption applies where the conduct in
question has a direct effect on the product market, or on the
consumer himself.
To read Brown, as defendants suggest, as extending the
labor exemption to agreements with a direct effect on the mar-
ket for products and services would be highly injurious to
consumers. In addition to profit sharing, employers could use
other anticompetitive agreements, such as price fixing and
output restrictions, in order to align their economic interests
so as to aid them in defeating unions in the collective bargain-
ing process. The consequences for consumers might last
indefinitely: the collective bargaining process and disputes
arising from it can last for months or even years. Defendants’
reading of Brown is not supported by anything in the case
itself, nor by precedent, nor by policy considerations.
C.
[16] Defendants ask us to apply the nonstatutory labor
exemption to immunize their profit sharing agreement from
the antitrust laws. The agreement, however, is not “needed to
make the collective-bargaining process work,” Brown, 518
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11979
U.S. at 234, nor does it raise questions that are ordinarily
resolved by, or even susceptible to resolution by, the applica-
tion of labor law principles. Finally, the agreement has a
direct adverse effect on the consumer and the product market.
Under these circumstances, to exempt defendants’ anticompe-
titive agreement from the antitrust laws simply because it was
entered into in order to help employers prevail in a labor dis-
pute would be contrary to the fundamental principles of both
labor and antitrust law, as well as to the actions of both Con-
gress and the courts in their efforts to reconcile those two
important bodies of national law. Accordingly, we hold that
the nonstatutory labor exemption does not apply to defen-
dants’ profit sharing agreement.
IV.
[17] We AFFIRM the district court’s denial of summary
judgment to defendants, and hold that the profit sharing agree-
ment (which defendants term a “revenue sharing provision”)
of the Mutual Strike Assistance Agreement is not immunized
from antitrust review by the nonstatutory labor exemption.
For the reasons set forth herein, we also REVERSE the dis-
trict court’s denial of summary judgment to plaintiff, and hold
that defendants’ profit sharing agreement violates § 1 of the
Sherman Act. We remand to the district court for entry of
judgment in favor of the plaintiff and for any further proceed-
ings as may be consistent with this opinion.
AFFIRMED in part, REVERSED in part, and
REMANDED.
WARDLAW, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting
in part:
I agree with the conclusions of the district court and major-
ity that the Mutual Strike Assistance Agreement (“MSAA”)
11980 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
lies outside the nonstatutory labor exemption, and agree with
the district court’s conclusion that the MSAA, the arrange-
ment in question, is not a per se violation of section 1 of the
Sherman Act. I would also affirm the district court’s denial of
the State of California’s summary judgment motion because
California failed to provide sufficient evidence of the arrange-
ment’s anticompetitive effects as a whole and in context to
meet its burden on summary judgment. As for the pro-
competitive effects or the possibility that there is no impact on
the market as a result of the novel arrangement at issue, there
exist genuine issues of material fact that preclude summary
judgment.
The majority relies on California Dental Ass’n v. Federal
Trade Comm’n, 526 U.S. 756 (1999), to devise a new stan-
dard of “per se-plus or quick look-minus” antitrust review that
it believes is required to review the arrangement here. As it
must: as the State of California itself points out, no case has
ever held that revenue-sharing associated with a multi-
employer labor negotiation operates as a restraint of trade in
violation of the Sherman Act. If the MSAA were a pure
profit-sharing arrangement across the entire market, there
would be no need for a new standard, because the per se rule
would apply. Cf. Citizen Publishing Co. v. United States, 394
U.S. 131, 135 (1969) (“Pooling of profits pursuant to an
inflexible ratio . . . runs afoul of the Sherman Act.”).
Here, seven local unions affiliated with the United Food
and Commercial Workers (“UFCW”), of which six operated
as a multi-union bargaining unit, agreed that grocery chains
Ralph’s, Vons, and Albertson’s1 could operate as a multi-
employer bargaining unit for renegotiation of the collective
bargaining agreement set to expire shortly. By entering into
the MSAA, the grocery chains sought to deter the unions from
bringing economic pressure to bear on one single employer
1
The fourth party to the MSAA, Food4Less, a subsidiary of Ralph’s,
had a separate contract with UFCW, expiring four months later.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC. 11981
with the intent of forcing that employer to exert pressure on
the others to settle on unfavorable terms. The MSAA thus
established an understanding that “a strike against one
Employer will amount to a strike against all Employers.” The
arrangement set forth certain mutual obligations, including
that if one employer was struck, each other signatory would
lock out all union employees within forty-eight hours, and
that a revenue-sharing provision would be triggered in the
event of a strike. Under the revenue-sharing provision, the
grocery chains agreed to reimburse those that lost revenue due
to a strike in an amount that would maintain their relative rev-
enues pre- and post-strike. It is undisputed that during the
labor negotiations other competition existed in the relevant
market, and that the MSAA would expire two weeks after the
labor negotiations ended.
Because the State of California relied upon its position that
the MSAA violated the Sherman Act under the “per se” and
quick look standards, the record is bereft of market analyses
or an explanation of the actual anticompetitive effects of the
MSAA. Although I share the majority’s skepticism about the
legitimacy of the grocery chains’ contention that lowering
labor costs by revenue-sharing to diminish any “whipsaw”
tactics by the union would ultimately benefit customers in the
form of lower prices,2 the evidence of the actual anticompe-
titve effects of the agreement is, at best, in dispute.
As Justice Souter wrote in California Dental,
The object is to see whether the experience of the
market has been so clear, or necessarily will be, that
a confident conclusion about the principal tendency
of a restriction will follow from a quick (or at least
2
The use of a revenue-sharing agreement in the context of multi-
employer bargaining may in fact have a pro-competitive impact, but
whether it is ethical and/or a practice that our country’s labor laws should
permit strikes me as a question best left to policymakers, not courts.
11982 STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. SAFEWAY, INC.
quicker) look, in place of a more sedulous one. And
of course what we see may vary over time, if rule-of-
reason analyses in case after case reach identical
conclusions.
California Dental, 526 U.S. at 781. I agree with the district
court that a “quick look” standard of review was thus inappro-
priate, in part because no case has addressed whether “a great
likelihood of anticompetitive effects can be easily ascer-
tained,” id. at 770, in agreements such as this. I do not agree
that whether the MSAA violates the Sherman Act is intu-
itively obvious; a more extended examination of the evidence
is warranted. On this record, I am unable to reach a “confident
conclusion that the principal tendency,” id. at 781, of the
arrangement at issue is to restrict competition so as to have an
anticompetitive effect on customers and markets. Therefore I
must dissent from the majority’s holding on that question.