Price Fixing Definition:

In Bailey's Bakery, Justice Pence of the United States District Court (Hawaii) wrote:

"Price fixing is an ominous phrase in antitrust suits. Under the Sherman Act, price fixing means a combination or conspiracy formed for the purpose and with the effect of raising, depressing, fixing, pegging or stabilizing the price of a commodity in interstate commerce. The test is not what the actual effect is on prices, but whether such agreements interfere with the freedom of traders and thereby restrain their ability to sell in accordance with their own judgment. Any such conspiracy to fix prices is unreasonable per se."

In Ohio Valley Electric, Justice Feinberg of the United States District Court (New York) suggested that:

"Prices are fixed if the range within which sales will be made is agreed upon."

In US v Flom, Justice Coleman of the United States Court of Appeals commented as follows:

"An agreement that one company would not submit a bid lower than another is price fixing of the simplest kind and is a per se violation (of the Sherman Act)."

REFERENCES:

• American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 147 F. 2d 93 (1944)
• Bailey's Bakery, Ltd. v. Continental Baking Company, 235 F. Supp. 705 (1964)
• Ohio Valley Electric Corp. v. General Electric Co., 244 F. Supp. 914 [1965, relying on United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150 (1944)]
• United States v. Flom, 558 F. 2d 1179 (1977)