Comcast Corp. v. Behrend

133 S.Ct. 1426 (2013)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D engaged in a series of transactions that Ps have described as “clustering,” a strategy of concentrating operations within a particular region. D acquired competitor cable providers in the region and swapping their own systems outside the region for competitor systems located in the region. Ps filed a class-action antitrust suit claiming that D entered into unlawful swap agreements, in violation of §1 of the Sherman Act, and monopolized or attempted to monopolize services in the cluster, in violation of §2. Ps sought to certify a class under 23(b)(3). The District Court held that to meet the predominance requirement Ps had to show (1) that the existence of individual injury resulting from the alleged antitrust violation (referred to as “antitrust impact”) was “capable of proof at trial through evidence that [was] common to the class rather than individual to its members”; and (2) that the damages resulting from that injury were measurable “on a class-wide basis” through use of a “common methodology.” The District Court accepted an overbuilder theory of antitrust impact as capable of classwide proof and rejected the rest of Ps' theories. The District Court limited “proof of antitrust impact” to “the theory that D engaged in anticompetitive clustering conduct, the effect of which was to deter the entry of overbuilders in the Philadelphia DMA.” The District Court found that the damages resulting from overbuilder-deterrence impact could be calculated on a classwide basis. A Dr. McClave designed a regression model comparing actual cable prices in the Philadelphia DMA with hypothetical prices that would have prevailed but for petitioners' allegedly anticompetitive activities. This model calculated damages of $875,576,662 for the entire class. The model did not isolate damages resulting from any one theory of antitrust impact. The class was certified, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. D appealed contending the class was improperly certified because the model, among other shortcomings, failed to attribute damages resulting from overbuilder deterrence, the only theory of injury remaining in the case.