Price Fixing

Defying threats of a presidential veto, the House voted 235-157 yesterday to strengthen a law that prohibits manufacturers from punishing retailers who cut prices on brand-name products. In addition to putting more muscle into laws that ban price-fixing, the bill would make it easier for retailers who have been cut off by manufacturers to sue for redress in federal courts. Consumer groups, discounters and state attorneys general say the punishing of retailers is escalating rapidly under recent Supreme Court decisions and a reluctance by the Bush and Reagan administrations to pursue such "vertical" price-fixing cases under antitrust laws.

They are the giants of the garbage industry: Waste Management Inc. of Oak Brook, Ill., and Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. of Houston. Their trash routes ramble all across America. And on the surface, the two huge companies appear to be hot competitors. But are they really competing? In the last year, both waste firms, which are bidding for trash-collection contracts in Philadelphia, have been accused in civil lawsuits and criminal complaints of price fixing and other antitrust violations.

The former chief executive officer of a British company convicted of participating in a global price-fixing conspiracy has been charged along with three others with misleading a federal grand jury in Philadelphia. When the grand jury issued subpoenas in 1999, the government alleged, senior executives of the Morgan Crucible Co. ordered documents destroyed or hidden. Top company officials are also accused of creating a "script" to deceive investigators and of rehearsing witnesses before grand jury appearances.

Don Miller, proprietor of the Frayser Tennis Shop in Memphis, Tenn., is, by his own account, a "two-time loser. " His crime? Selling Prince tennis racquets at small discounts. In December 1989, Prince halted its supply of racquets to Miller for 30 days because he knocked 10 percent off the manufacturer's dictated retail price. Then last December, he was suspended for three months because he shaved 95 cents - that's right, 95 cents - off the price of a $249.95 racquet and a $129.

In 1994 Jeffrey Lurie purchased the Philadelphia Eagles for $185 million, the largest price ever paid for a football franchise. This year, the state of Maryland, in combination with the city of Baltimore, made a deal to become home to the Cleveland Browns, in exchange for $50 million, 30 years' rent-free stadium usage and the right to all concession and parking revenues. St. Louis built a new enclosed stadium as part of a deal to become home to the Rams for the year. The large amounts expended for these sports franchises, either to purchase or move them, are difficult to conceive.

For more than 30 years, officials from the eight Ivy League universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology got together and decided how much aid to offer needy students who had applied to more than one of them. It was called the "Overlap Program" and was supposed to ensure that as many needy students as possible got into the nation's best schools. But last year the federal government looked closely at the program and called it something else: price-fixing. Facing federal charges of breaking the nation's antitrust laws, the eight Ivy League universities agreed to stop doing it. But MIT refused, arguing that it wasn't price-fixing, but a charitable practice that allowed the greatest number of talented but needy students to get a quality education.

Is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a charity, or is the prestigious Cambridge institution a corporation? Should the university - and all universities - be exempt from federal laws against price fixing? Should MIT, in deciding how much aid to offer students, be allowed to meet and exchange financial information about applicants with other universities? These are the questions that MIT and government lawyers debated in federal court for 10 days, ending yesterday with closing arguments in the Justice Department's antitrust suit against the university.

American Airlines is trying to enlist public support in its battle against a Justice Department price-fixing lawsuit that the airlines and other travel- industry groups contend will hurt travelers' ability to get the latest information on air fares. American said last week that the lawsuit, in which it is a defendant along with seven other major U.S. airlines, had prompted it to radically alter its practice of providing information to reporters who are writing or broadcasting stories about air fares.

From 1990 to 2000, a venerable British manufacturer participated in a global conspiracy to fix the price of tiny but vital carbon products used in trains operated by PATCO, SEPTA and other subway systems. When federal prosecutors in Philadelphia issued subpoenas to the company's U.S. subsidiary in 1999, top executives in England acted swiftly. They ordered incriminating documents destroyed. They encouraged conspirators at another company to lie to a federal grand jury in Philadelphia.

Would I lie to you? Mark Whitacre, the central figure in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! , is a guy who blows the whistle and his own horn at the same time. It's a stunt that leaves him, and us, breathless. And not always in a good way. Based on the curious and curiouser tale of the real-life agribusiness exec (Matt Damon, bewigged and wiggy), the truth-based film about a compulsive liar wavers between corporate thriller and screwball comedy. The result is like Michael Clayton , that story of moral remorse, but played for uneasy laughs.

Twelve years ago, the U.S. Justice Department came up with a marvelously potent weapon to fight price-fixing in big business - an amnesty program for whistle-blowers. Any company engaged in price-fixing could avoid prosecution by admitting its sins and handing up evidence against its coconspirators. The amnesty program proved astonishingly successful, so much so that top Justice Department officials call it the "cornerstone" of their effort to prosecute national and international price-fixing cartels.

The former chief executive officer of a British company convicted of participating in a global price-fixing conspiracy has been charged along with three others with misleading a federal grand jury in Philadelphia. When the grand jury issued subpoenas in 1999, the government alleged, senior executives of the Morgan Crucible Co. ordered documents destroyed or hidden. Top company officials are also accused of creating a "script" to deceive investigators and of rehearsing witnesses before grand jury appearances.

From 1990 to 2000, a venerable British manufacturer participated in a global conspiracy to fix the price of tiny but vital carbon products used in trains operated by PATCO, SEPTA and other subway systems. When federal prosecutors in Philadelphia issued subpoenas to the company's U.S. subsidiary in 1999, top executives in England acted swiftly. They ordered incriminating documents destroyed. They encouraged conspirators at another company to lie to a federal grand jury in Philadelphia.

Federal antitrust prosecutors in Philadelphia and lawyers for the Mitsubishi Corp. have jointly recommended that Mitsubishi pay a $134 million criminal fine in a steel-industry price-fixing case. The recommendation goes to U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz, who presided over a two-week- long jury trial in Philadelphia earlier this year. If accepted, the fine would be one of the highest ever imposed in a price-fixing case. Last Feb. 12, Mitsubishi, one of the world"s largest corporations, was convicted by a jury of aiding in a conspiracy to fix the prices of graphite electrodes.

Mitsubishi Corp., one of the world's largest companies, could be facing a $400 million criminal fine after being convicted yesterday by a federal jury of aiding in a worldwide price-fixing conspiracy that impacted the U.S. steel industry. The company, which had total sales in 1999 of more than $100 billion, will be sentenced May 10 by U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz, who presided over the two-week jury trial. A spokesman for Mitsubishi said the Japanese-based corporation "is profoundly disappointed by the jury's decision" and will appeal.

Carbone of America Industries Corp. pleaded guilty and was fined $7.15 million by a federal judge in Philadelphia this week for being part of an international cartel that fixed the price of isostatic graphite. Carbone's president and chief executive, Michel Coniglio, a French national, also was fined $100,000 and must leave the United States in seven days because of his admitted role in the price fixing conspiracy. The sentences were imposed late Monday by U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III under plea-bargains negotiated by prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department"s Antitrust Division office in Philadelphia.

A wealthy businessman yesterday was sentenced to nine months in prison and fined $1 million by a federal judge in Philadelphia for conspiring to hike the worldwide price of steel-making graphite electrodes. Robert J. Hart, former UCAR Carbon Co. vice president, pleaded guilty earlier and has agreed to pay the fine within three years. Chief U.S. District Judge James T. Giles said Hart, of Wilton, Conn., is to report to a federal prison in 25 days. Hart's boss, Robert C. Krass, 63, former UCAR president, also pleaded guilty earlier to price fixing.

Time is running out for investors hoping to recoup money lost to a price-fixing scheme that existed in the Nasdaq Stock Market between 1989 and 1996. The lawsuit, which claimed that about 1 million investors lost money when Nasdaq stock market dealers collaborated with each other to keep more profit for themselves, was settled more than a year ago. Now, people affected by the scheme must fill out complicated forms by Dec. 8 to get a piece of the $1.03 billion settlement. While the lawsuit was settled in New York, Philadelphia-area accounting firms are handling the processing of claims.

the satellite transmission service that offers football fanatics the choice of dozens of live football games on their home televisions - has been challenged on price-fixing allegations in a federal lawsuit filed in Philadelphia. When the National Football League was given a broadcast antitrust exemption by Congress in 1961, television satellite transmission was not covered by the exemption because the technology did not exist, according to the authors of the class-action antitrust suit filed in U.S. District Court by eight law firms from around the country.