ANTITRUST

Reddy v. Puma, No. 1:06CV1283ENV-KAM (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 21, 2006)

A physician sued two other physicians pursuant to Section 1 of the Sherman Act and Section 4 of the Clayton Act, alleging that the physician defendants and others entered into a contract, combination, or conspiracy to eliminate him from competition through unfair business conduct. The plaintiff physician claimed that this conduct enabled the physician defendants to control the market for interventional cardiology care in the local geographic area. The physician defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York denied the defendant physicians' motion, and directed the physicians to answer the complaint. The court held that the plaintiff physician had antitrust standing because he asserted an antitrust injury by connecting the physician defendants' anticompetitive behavior and conduct to his harm (displacing him and another physician with whom he cross-referred), which therefore led to a marked decline in the overall provision of qualified services in the relevant market. The court found that the complaint clearly alleged a decline in the quality of patient care, and that the plaintiff physician's allegations were not limited to some subset of the relevant market. It also determined that the plaintiff physician would need discovery in order to access statistics that would allow him to assess the marketwide effects of defendant physicians' alleged anticompetitive behavior. It held that the substantial market share of the plaintiff physician and his cross-referring physician was alone a sufficient allegation to establish that their effective elimination from the relevant market could have had an impact on the quality and output of services in the relevant market as a whole. The court also held that the plaintiff physician was the proper plaintiff to assert the antitrust laws, because his interests were aligned with those of consumers generally. The court found that the primary alleged antitrust injury was a decrease in the provision of qualified care, and that, as a cardiologist practicing in the relevant marketplace, the plaintiff physician was knowledgeable about physician defendants' anticompetitive conduct. Accordingly, it held that the plaintiff physician was an efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws and therefore had standing to bring suit.