In re Sugar Industry Antitrust Litigation, 201.

• Decision Date: 19 September 1975
• Docket Number: No. 201.,201.
• Citation: In re Sugar Industry Antitrust Litigation, 399 F.Supp. 1397 (J.P.M.L. 1975)
• Parties: In re SUGAR INDUSTRY ANTITRUST LITIGATION. Milton W. Freedman, et al. v. Amalgamated Sugar Co., et al., E.D. Pennsylvania, Civil Action No. 75-514.
• Court: Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation

399 F. Supp. 1397

In re SUGAR INDUSTRY ANTITRUST LITIGATIONMilton W. Freedman, et al. v. Amalgamated Sugar Co., et al., E.D. Pennsylvania, Civil ActionNo. 75-514.

No. 201.

Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

September 19, 1975.

Before ALFRED P. MURRAH^*, Chairman, and JOHN MINOR WISDOM, EDWARD WEINFELD, EDWIN A. ROBSON, WILLIAM H. BECKER, JOSEPH S. LORD, III, and STANLEY A. WEIGEL^**, Judges of the Panel.

OPINION AND ORDER

PER CURIAM.

The Panel previously transferred all actions in this litigation to the Northern District of California and, with the consent of that court, assigned them to the Honorable George H. Boldt, sitting by designation, for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407.In re Sugar Industry Antitrust Litigation,395 F.Supp. 1271(Jud.Pan.Mult.Lit.1975).Since the above-captioned action appeared to involve questions of fact common to the previously transferred litigation, the Panel ordered the parties to show cause why the action should not be transferred to the Northern District of California for inclusion in the proceedings pending in that district.¹

The plaintiffs in this action are two commercial purchasers of refined sugar whose principal places of business are located in Philadelphia.These plaintiffs purport to sue on behalf of a class of all persons throughout the country who manufacture products for resale which utilize sugar as a component and they allege that all the defendants participated in a nationwide conspiracy to fix the price of refined sugar.

The complaint includes 25 sugar refining companies and one trade association as defendants.Eight of these defendants are named in the litigation pending in the Northern District of California(so-called "Western defendants"); seventeen other defendants are companies which, with one exception, have their principal places of business east of the Mississippi River and which are not named in the California litigation (so-called "Eastern defendants"); the remaining defendant, Amstar Corporation, is the only sugar refiner that transacts business nationwide and is considered both an Eastern and a Western defendant.²

The Eastern defendants refine primarily cane sugar and the Western defendants, for the most part, refine beet sugar.³Apparently, only a small amount of refined sugar is shipped from one part of the country to the other because of relatively expensive transportation costs.

We have received responses from most of the parties in this action.The eight solely Western defendants, one of the solely Eastern defendants and Amstar favor transfer to the Northern District of California.Plaintiffs and ten of the solely Eastern defendants initially opposed transfer and, in the alternative, suggested that plaintiffs' claims against the Eastern and Western defendants be separated for pretrial proceedings in different districts.During oral argument, counsel for plaintiffs went a step further and proposed to dismiss all claims against the Western defendants(except Amstar) and amend the class allegation to include only commercial purchasers of sugar in the eastern United States, on the condition that the claims against the Eastern defendants be allowed to remain in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.He also stipulated that plaintiffs will not initiate discovery against any of the solely Western defendants or their employees, with the exception of individuals who once worked for an Eastern defendant during the alleged conspiracy and now work for a Western defendant.

We have concluded that transferring the Freedman action at this time would not promote the just and efficient conduct of the litigation and, accordingly, we will leave this action in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, subject to plaintiffs' implementing their aforementioned proposal.

The defendants who favor transferring Freedman to the Northern District of California contend that it shares common questions of fact with the previously transferred actions because the complaint contains similar allegations of price fixing and is purportedly based on the government actions which were instituted in California.In addition, these parties express deep concern that, even with the implementation of plaintiffs' entire proposal, they will still be unnamed co-conspirators in Freedman and therefore be forced to monitor and participate in dual discovery proceedings in San Francisco and Philadelphia, unless this action is transferred.

Although we share the concern expressed by these defendants regarding possible duplicative discovery between Freedman and the litigation in California, we are persuaded that, at the present time, the purposes of Section...