Law Commons^™

The Probative Synergy Of Plus Factors In Price-Fixing Litigation, Christopher R. Leslie

Northwestern University Law Review

Private plaintiffs alleging that defendants conspired to fix prices in violation of antitrust law must usually prove their claims through circumstantial evidence, generally in the form of “plus factors”—evidence indicating that the defendants’ parallel conduct was caused by collusion, not by independent decision-making. Supreme Court precedent requires fact finders to examine antitrust plaintiffs’ evidence holistically. With increasing frequency, however, federal courts in price-fixing cases improperly isolate each piece of circumstantial evidence presented by the plaintiff and then deprive it of all probative value because that single piece of evidence is insufficient, standing alone, to prove a price-fixing conspiracy. As a …