FG&I - News

MARCH NEWSLETTER

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio recently granted summary judgment in favor of our client, The Iams Company, in a dispute with a former distributor. On January 26, 2000, Chief Judge Walter H. Rice granted summary judgment in Watkins & Son Pet Supplies v. The Iams Company. The former distributor had alleged various claims for relief, including violations of the antitrust laws and fraud.

In its 27-page opinion, the Court found that plaintiff could not sustain a claim based on ¤¤ 2(d)and (e) of the Robinson-Patman Act. Relying on plaintiff's deposition testimony, the Court found that there were multiple explanations for the alleged discrimination, which did not raise a genuine issue of material fact. As to a Clayton Act ¤ 3 claim for exclusive dealing, the Court focused primarily on the requirement of an antitrust injury, and found that the distributor's economic loss, even if it occurred, could not be the basis for an antitrust injury. The Court found that plaintiff's contentions as to fraud were unreasonable as a matter of law. Trial attorney for Iams is Jeff Ireland, who along with Charlie Faruki, is a member of the Board of Governors of the Antitrust Section of the Ohio State Bar Association.

Jeff Ireland was also elected president of the Board of Trustees of Planned Parenthood of the Greater Miami Valley. A nine-year member of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Ireland was elected to a two-year term.

After ten years in its current office space, construction has begun on FG&I's expanded offices. The firm is looking forward to being in its new office environs by the third quarter of 2000, in the same Courthouse Plaza building. Committed to downtown Dayton, FG&I will continue to provide high-quality litigation services to both new and existing clients.

Last month summary judgment was granted in favor of the defendants in a purported nationwide class action that had been filed in 1997 in the Common Pleas Court of Montgomery County, Ohio (in Dayton). The defendants moving for summary judgment were manufacturers of replacement torchiere-style light bulbs. The alleged class was defined as "all persons and entities in the United States and its commonwealths and territories who purchased torchiere-style floor lamps containing 300-watt or 500-watt halogen bulbs manufactured by the Defendants." The plaintiffs' complaint included claims of fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, and violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act and the Ohio Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Plaintiffs sought damages and injunctive relief (an injunction against marketing the halogen bulbs for use in torchiere-style lamps, and an injunction requiring the defendants to issue refunds or retrofit bulbs with an integral shield).

The Common Pleas Court granted summary judgment for the defendants, including FG&I's client Osram Sylvania Inc., on several grounds. First, as a matter of product liability law, the Court held that the manufacturer of a component part is not liable or responsible if the component part itself is not defective. Second, the Court found that the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a specialized federal agency, asserted primary jurisdiction over the matter via a retrofit program involving torchiere-style lamp fixtures manufactured for use with halogen bulbs, and that this program, conducted by the CPSC and the floor lamp fixture industry (members of which were not among the defendants) addressed the plaintiffs' claims. Finally, the Court found "that none of the Plaintiffs in this action have alleged any injury from the torchiere lamps containing any halogen bulbs that they may have purchased." This ruling is in line with the rulings of other courts in product liability class actions, which have rejected those cases on the ground that an alleged injury that has not yet manifested itself, is insufficient to sustain a cause of action. A copy of the Decision, Order and Entry is available from Charlie Faruki upon request.