Vitamin makers win round in antitrust case

Monday, June 14, 2004 | 9:24 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court today overturned a decision that had opened Roche Holding AG, BASF AG and other companies that fixed prices on bulk vitamins to billions of dollars in new claims.

The justices unanimously threw out a legal theory that non-U.S. customers were using to press an antitrust suit in U.S. courts. The decision returns the case to the lower courts, where the vitamin purchasers will have a chance to pursue a different argument.

The ruling is a partial victory for 14 companies that operated a cartel and are seeking to limit the fallout from a case that already has produced a record $4 billion in penalties. A group of vitamin buyers that included an Ecuadorian fishery and an Australian pig farm were seeking to take advantage of the triple damages available only under U.S. antitrust law.

In a decision written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the high court said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit misapplied federal antitrust law when it let the suit go forward on the grounds that the cartel also damaged U.S. purchasers.

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