Antitrust – FTAIA — dismissal

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United States Court of Appeals

CIVIL

Antitrust

FTAIA; dismissal

An antitrust action that fails to allege a direct effect on domestic commerce must be dismissed.

“Here, the complaint contains no factual allegations to support application of the import-commerce exception, properly understood. It does not, for example, allege any specific facts to support a plausible inference that the offshore defendants agreed to an American price or production quota for potash. Nor does it allege, for that matter, that the defendants agreed to worldwide production quotas for all members of the conspiracy or that a global cartel price was ever set. The complaint’s specific factual allegations describe anticompetitive conduct aimed at the potash markets in Brazil, China, and India—not the U.S. import market. True, the complaint generally alleges that the ‘defendants conspired to coordinate potash prices and price increases so as to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the price at which potash was sold in the United States at artificially inflated and anticompetitive levels.’ But this wholly conclusory statement is akin to a recitation of the elements of the Sherman Act claim, which is insufficient under Twombly and Iqbal.”

Vacated and Remanded.

10-1712 Minn-Chem, Inc., v. Agrium Inc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Castillo, J., Sykes, J.