To celebrate our new competition law handbook for associations – The Competition Law Guide for Trade Associations in Canada – we thought we would post a few of the more interesting competition/antitrust association cases from 1905 to 2012.
Our small tiptoe through the history of associations and competition law will include cases involving ambulance operators, banks, building contractors, business forms suppliers, coal dealers, corrugated box manufacturers, corrugated metal pipe manufacturers, electrical contractors, fruit growers, gypsum dealers and manufacturers, insurance salespersons, lawyers, mandarin orange importers, notaries, pharmacists, paper mills, plumbing contractors and suppliers, real estate agents, softwood lumber dealers, surveyors and wholesale grocers, among others.
We’ll wrap up with the ongoing TREB case, the CREA case (settled in the fall of 2010) and a few of the more interesting recent international association cases over the past 10 years or so. To kick things off, the following are a couple of good old ones from the silent film era.
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The King v. Elliott (1905)
In The King v. Elliott, the president of an Ontario coal association was accused of conspiracy under section 520 of the Criminal Code. This case involved association rules that sought to restrict the sale of coal from operators and shippers directly to consumers or non-members. Members of the association were also given rights to certain areas, with the association dictating coal prices and issuing a “look out list” for suppliers of non-members that were not entitled to buy coal directly from suppliers. The Ontario Court of Appeal, in the first successful combines prosecution in Canada, confirmed the lower court’s judgment convicting the accused.
Wampole & Co. v. F.E. Karn Co. Ltd. (1906)
In Wampole & Co. v. F.E. Karn Co. Ltd., plaintiff manufacturing chemists sought damages and an injunction restraining defendant druggists from alleged breaches of a contract, which fixed the wholesale and retail prices of drugs. The defendants argued that the agreements constituted an unlawful conspiracy. The Court agreed, finding that the agreements, which were in the form adopted by two associations (the Association of Retail Merchants and Association of Wholesale Merchants) “entirely destroyed” competition and contravened the Criminal Code.
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