“Section 1 of the Sherman Act clearly prohibits members of a medical-dental staff from agreeing with one another to coerce a hospital’s trustees to deny privileges to members of a competing profession for the purpose of furthering their economic self-interest.”
How later courts described this case
- “Section 1 of the Sherman Act clearly prohibits members of a medical-dental staff from agreeing with one another to coerce a hospital’s trustees to deny privileges to members of a competing profession for the purpose of furthering their economic self-interest.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MOTZ, District Judge
(concurring).
Because I agree that plaintiffs did not allege a conspiracy among individual members of the medical-dental staff of the For-syth Hospital, I concur. However, in my view Section 1 of the Sherman Act clearly prohibits members of a medical-dental staff from agreeing with one another to coerce a hospital’s trustees to deny privileges to members of a competing profession for the purpose of furthering their economic self-interest. A jury could properly infer the existence of such an unlawful agreement from evidence of threats made to the trustees of mass resignations by the members of the medical-dental staff and the absence of demonstrably sound reasons relating to the quality of patient care underlying the defendants’ actions.