Thomas & Thomas Rodmakers, Inc. v. Newport Adhesives & Composites, Inc.

209 F.R.D. 159, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10546, 2002 WL 1832282
CourtDistrict Court, C.D. California
DecidedMay 3, 2002
DocketNo. 99-CV-7796
StatusPublished
Cited by39 cases

This text of 209 F.R.D. 159 (Thomas & Thomas Rodmakers, Inc. v. Newport Adhesives & Composites, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, C.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Thomas & Thomas Rodmakers, Inc. v. Newport Adhesives & Composites, Inc., 209 F.R.D. 159, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10546, 2002 WL 1832282 (C.D. Cal. 2002).

Opinion

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO STRIKE DECLARATION; ORDER GRANTING CLASS CERTIFICATION

COOPER, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on Defendants’ Motion to Strike Plaintiffs’ expert report. This matter is also before the Court on Plaintiffs’ Motion to Certify Class. These matters were heard by the Court on March 18, 2002, at which time the parties were in receipt of the Court’s Tentative Order. For the reasons stated below, the Court hereby denies Defendants’ Motion to Strike (docket # 228), and the Court hereby grants Plaintiffs’ Motion to Certify Class (docket # 190).

I. Background

The complaint alleges that defendants violated federal antitrust laws by conspiring to raise the price of carbon fiber and prepeg, a product made from carbon fiber. Carbon fiber products are manufactured by exposing certain organic materials to extreme temperatures. Carbon fibers can be combined with resins to form “prepreg” products, which are ultimately incorporated into finished goods. Carbon fiber and prepreg products go [161]*161through additional processing before being incorporated into final goods sold.

Plaintiffs are four sporting goods manufacturers and one assignee of a sporting goods manufacturer. Plaintiffs allege that defendants conspired for six years to fix the price of carbon fiber and prepeg in the United States.

Defendants are ten domestic and three Japanese manufacturers of raw carbon fiber and/or prepreg products. During the proposed class period, some defendants made both carbon fiber and prepreg, two made only carbon fiber, and one made only pre-preg.

Plaintiffs request class certification of:

All persons (excluding governmental entities, defendants, their subsidiaries and affiliates) who purchased Carbon Fiber in the United States directly from any of the defendants or any subsidiary or affiliate thereof, at any time during the period from January 1, 1992, and January 31, 1999.

(See Reply at 3 n. 1.).1

The Court will refer to these proposed plaintiffs as “the proposed class action plaintiffs.”

II. Motion to Strike

A. Defendants’ Position

Defendants move to strike the declaration of Robert Tollison, plaintiffs’ expert. At the outset, the Court notes that the present Motion is not properly a motion to strike, which should be addressed to the pleadings only. See, e.g., Sidney-Vinstein v. A.H. Robins Co., 697 F.2d 880, 880 (9th Cir.1983). Nevertheless, defendants’ Motion, when construed as an objection to evidence offered in support of class certification, is properly before the Court.

Plaintiffs’ counsel and a consultant hired by plaintiffs’ counsel selected documents for Tollison to review. Defendants argue that Tollison impermissibly merely assumes the substantive allegations of the complaint are true in arriving at his conclusion. Defendants argue that Tollison’s declaration has no factual foundation, is speculative, and relies on assumptions unsupported by the record. Specifically, Defendants object to Tollison’s declaration in the following ways:

1) Tollison has not tested his economic methodolgy;

2) Tollison has not studied the actual prices purchasers paid defendants for carbon fiber or prepreg products;

3) Tollison has not estimated the price purchasers would have paid absent the alleged conspiracy;

4) Tollison has not generated, analyzed, or calculated empirical data to evaluate his hypothesis;

5) Tollison has not examined the percentage of sales of carbon fiber products defendants made to nondefendant entities;

6) Tollison has not analyzed whether customers of carbon fiber products considered price to be the most important purchasing factor;

7) Tollison has not studied the percentage of costs downstream that prepreggers pass on to customers;

8) Tollison has not studied the elasticity of demand for any products sold by defendants; and

9) Tollison has not spoken with any carbon fiber or prepreg purchasers other than one conversation with one of the named plaintiffs.

Additionally, defendants argue that Tolli-son relies on the assumptions of the conspiracy that are neither rational nor reasonable. [162]*162Specifically, defendants make the following arguments:

1) Tollison testified that this action involves a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy which had vertical implications at the pre-preg level, but plaintiffs characterize the present action as a “classic horizontal price-fixing conspiracy.”

2) For a conspiracy to be rational, there must be an economic payoff for each party to the conspiracy. Tollison assumed that the conspiracy affects the price of both carbon fiber and prepreg, yet he testified that any conspiracy profit would have to be recognized at the prepreg level. The defendants that purchase carbon fiber to process into prepreg, but do not manufacture carbon fiber, would be illogical participants to the conspiracy alleged by plaintiffs because these defendants would be agreeing to conspire to increase the price of their own raw materials.

Defendants also argue that Tollison did not express an understanding of how purchasers obtained carbon fiber products, and did not consider the impact of long-term price and supply contracts customers or purchasers that bought at a spot market.

Defendants contend that Tollison ignored the preferences and power of purchasers and did not consider such circumstances as the effect of a “Buy American” policy.

B. Admissibility of Expert Testimony

To be admissible, expert testimony must be relevant (or helpful) and reliable. See Daubert v. Merrett Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993); Kumho Tire Co., Ltd. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 119 S.Ct. 1167, 143 L.Ed.2d 238 (1999).

In Daubert, the Court charged trial judges with the responsibility of acting as gatekeepers to “ ‘ensure that any and all scientific testimony ... is not only relevant, but reliable,’ ” and the Court in Kumho Tire clarified that this gatekeeper function applies to all expert testimony, not just testimony based in science. See Kumho Tire, 526 U.S. at 147, 119 S.Ct. 1167, 143 L.Ed.2d 238 (quoting Daubert, 509 U.S. at 589, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469). Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which governs the admissibility of expert opinion testimony, states: “If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.”

Rule 702 requires that the evidence “assist the trier of fact,” or in other words, that it be relevant. DaubeH, 509 U.S. at 591,113 S.Ct. 2786.

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Bluebook (online)
209 F.R.D. 159, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10546, 2002 WL 1832282, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/thomas-thomas-rodmakers-inc-v-newport-adhesives-composites-inc-cacd-2002.