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Digital Legal Top Stories
Supreme Court declines to review appeal court’s Starr v Sony decision
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 11 January 2011
America’s Supreme Court has knocked back an application by the four major record companies – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – to stop a lower court from reconsidering price-fixing allegations that have been made against the US record industry.
A group of American consumers led by Kevin Starr (well, his name comes first on the court papers) launched a class action lawsuit against the four majors a few years back, alleging that the big players of the US record industry – controlling, as they do, about 80% of the market – had colluded to keep the wholesale price for digital downloads at 70 cents and, in doing so, had broken the country’s competition, or anti-trust, laws.
In 2008, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling the plaintiffs had not presented enough evidence for an anti-trust case to be fully heard in court. But Starr et al appealed, and last year the US Appeals Court in New York ruled in their favour, declaring there were enough facts on the table to at least allege there had indeed been an antitrust price fixing conspiracy. The appeals court ordered the original judge to reconsider the case.
Legal reps for the majors quickly scurried to the US Supreme Court, arguing the appeals court had got it wrong, and that the plaintiffs simply lacked sufficient evidence for their case to be considered anew. But the Supreme Court yesterday declined, without explanation, to review the lower appeal court’s ruling, meaning the anti-trust case will presumably now return to the original judge for new consideration. Fun times.
