Twombly In Action
On July 19, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit released its opinion in Cosmetic Gallery Inc. v. Schoeneman Corp. As the Legal Intelligencer explains:
Giving quick effect to the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent business-friendly antitrust ruling, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the dismissal of a suit brought by a beauty supplies company that said it was the victim of a “group boycott” by distributors of so-called “salon-only” products. In its 20-page opinion in Cosmetic Gallery Inc. v. Schoeneman Corp., a unanimous three-judge panel found that the plaintiff failed to show the existence of a group boycott because its evidence “falls short of excluding the possibility that the distributors acted independently.”
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July 25th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
The case isn’t really an example of Twombley in action. What made Twombley so significant is that it involved a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the complaint. Cosmetic Gallery involved a motion for summary judgment. As such, it is a routine “is there enough evidence conscious parallelism and plus factors” or “direct evidence of concerted action” case. Minus the cites to Twombley it could have been decided and written the same way even if Twombley had never been decided, or decided on the basis of Stevens’ dissent!
August 10th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I have now posted about a motion to dismiss decision applying Twombly. http://www.antitrustreview.com/archives/1097