SEATTLE (Legal Newsline) - Parts of a class action lawsuit against Amazon over low prices will get to continue, with the law firms Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and Keller Postman as interim co-lead class counsel.
Seattle federal judge Richard Jones made those choices in a pair of orders on March 23 that ensure Amazon will have to fight allegations that an arrangement it had with third-party vendors created an unfair marketplace.
Antitrust concerns were initiated from the Federal Trade Commission years ago when studying the contract, which required vendors who sell on Amazon to charge as low a price on the Amazon site as they did on their own websites, despite Amazon getting a percentage of sales made through the Amazon site.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued Amazon over the contracts. The class action before Judge Jones was filed on behalf of shoppers on Aug. 30, 2020, more than a year after Amazon withdrew the provision under threat of investigation by the FTC.
Jones found the class action plaintiffs from 18 states had standing to bring suit but tossed their per se claim under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. He said the second amended complaint fails to present facts to support a "horizontal agreement," "a meeting of the minds" or a conspiracy between third-party sellers that would lead to per se liability.
However, he would not dismiss the Section 2 Monopolization claim or alternate Section 1 claims put forth by the plaintiffs.
Amazon argued its Fair Pricing Policy does not require vendors to add Amazon's fees and costs when selling on its platform. Amazon said the FPP protects consumers from price-gouging.
"Plaintiffs maintain that the 'Fair Pricing Policy' is simply a whitewashed version of the prior Price Parity requirement, and that the policy threatens sellers who sell their products for a higher price on Amazon with consequences such as 'removing the product from the Buy Box, suspending shipping options, and terminating selling privileges,'" Jones wrote.
"The SAC contains various allegations that the policy is administered as an anticompetitive (Most Favored Nation clause) and forces third-party sellers to maintain price parity across their online platforms even when they could offer lower prices on sales channels outside of Amazon in order to avoid suspension or termination.
"The court finds these allegations, taken as true, plausible on their face."
Jones also dismissed claims under California's Cartwright Act, a price-fixing law.