Mehri & Skalet represents a lumber company in a proposed class alleging that defendants, who provide rail freight transportation services, conspired to fix their prices. Price-fixing is a “per se” violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act—a per se violation is a category of antitrust violation that is so pernicious that an inquiry into its reasonableness is unwarranted. Defendants assess their customers rail fuel surcharges, a separately identified fee on customer bills, which purportedly compensates defendants for increases in the cost of fuel. Plaintiff alleges that in fact, defendants agreed to compute the surcharge as a percentage of revenue, rather than as a percentage of the actual cost of fuel for the transport that defendants provide. In addition, defendants frequently exchanged information as part of their agreement on the rates that would be charged, resulting in prices that moved in lockstep. As a result of this conspiracy, defendants were able to charge supracompetitve prices to the plaintiff and other customers. Plaintiff filed a complaint in federal district court in Washington D.C. in February 2008. |
