The Competitor : Canada Competition / Antitrust Blog by Stikeman Elliott Lawyers & Attorneys

Sultana L. Bennett -

On November 16, 2011, the Québec Court of Appeal issued a judgment unanimously reversing the 2008 Québec Superior Court decision in Option Consommateurs v. Infineon Technologies AG dismissing the motion for authorization to institute class action proceedings. Significantly, the class includes both direct and indirect purchasers, and the Quebec decision thus follows the dissent in the 2011 British Columbia Court of Appeal decision in Sun-Rype Products Ltd. v. Archer Daniels Midland Company, holding that the defendants would not face an unfair risk of double recovery because the plaintiffs alleged a single, aggregate loss notwithstanding the mix of direct and indirect purchasers in the class.

Background and Decision in the Superior Court

The defendants were manufacturers of dynamic random access memory or “DRAM,” a semiconductor memory product used in electronic devices, each of whom had admitted participation in a price-fixing conspiracy between 1999 and 2002 and all but one of whom had pleaded guilty to Sherman Antitrust Act violations arising from that conduct in the United States.

In its motion to institute the proceedings in Québec Superior Court, Option Consommateurs, a consumer advocacy organization, alleged that the defendants failed to respect statutory obligations under the Competition Act, and breached the general extracontractual duties imposed upon them by the Civil Code of Québec. Claudette Cloutier, a Montreal resident, sought status as the designated representative in the proceedings on behalf of direct and indirect purchasers of DRAM in Québec. In October 2001, Cloutier had purchased a computer containing DRAM online from Dell Computer Corporation’s website, and claimed to have paid an artificially inflated price for the computer as the result of the defendants’ price-fixing activity.

Justice Mongeau of the Superior Court denied the motion to authorize proceedings on two grounds: first, that Québec did not have proper territorial jurisdiction to hear the class action, but that even if it had, the allegations did not meet the test for authorization under Québec class proceedings law. Option Consommateurs and Cloutier appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeal.

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Michael Laskey -

On November 22, 2011, the Competition Bureau announced that criminal charges had been laid against six companies and five individuals accused of rigging bids for municipal and provincial sewer services contracts in the greater Montreal area. Bid-rigging, in which two or more bidders agree among themselves on whether or how to submit bids, without informing the person calling for the bids, is a criminal offence under section 47 of the Competition Act.

The Crown alleges that the accused companies and individuals conspired to pre-determine the winners of 37 municipal and provincial calls for tender in 2008 and 2009 related to the cleaning and maintenance of sewers, with a total value of C$3.3 million. The bidders who were not pre-determined to win allegedly submitted inflated, token bids in order to mislead tendering authorities into believing that the processes were competitive. Because the alleged conduct took place prior to the 2009 amendments to the Competition Act which increased the maximum penalties available under section 47, the accused face maximum penalties of up to five years in prison and/or a fine in the discretion of the court.

The Bureau also noted that its investigation benefitted from cooperation under its immunity and leniency programs, which provide incentives for parties involved in criminal conduct to self-report the conduct to the Bureau.

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Susan Hutton & Lindsay Gwyer -

On November 3, 2011, the Competition Tribunal issued a decision refusing to grant summary disposition to the vendor respondents in Commissioner of Competition v. CCS Corporation, thus confirming dissolution as a possible remedy in the case. The proceedings centre on the Commissioner’s application challenging CCS Corporation’s completed acquisition of Complete Environmental Inc., which owns the Babkirk Secure Landfill located in northeastern British Columbia, on the basis that the transaction is likely to substantially prevent competition for the disposal of hazardous waste in northeastern British Columbia (for more on the case, see our earlier post).

Because the proceedings deal with a completed transaction, the vendor respondents maintain that they are only implicated to the extent that the Tribunal would order dissolution as a remedy.  Consequently, the vendor respondents moved to have the Commissioner’s application dismissed against them on the ground that there was no genuine basis for the Tribunal to order dissolution. They argued that dissolution was an overly broad and punitive measure, and that divesture would be an effective and more appropriate remedy (assuming that the Commissioner is able to prove that the acquisition would substantially prevent competition). On the other hand, the Commissioner maintained that dissolution might be a necessary remedy, and argued that the application should be allowed to proceed to a hearing in order to determine several factual issues that would impact on the viability of either divesture or dissolution as an appropriate remedy.

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