United States Ninth Circuit

Noerr-Pennington immunity protects a private party from liability for the act of negotiating a settlement with a state entity. In an indirect legal challenge to the massive settlement agreement between the nation's largest tobacco companies and the attorneys general of 46 states and several territories, Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of plaintiff-smoker's putative class action alleging illegal price fixing is affirmed as: 1) plaintiff failed to show that the statutes implementing the settlement agreement are per se illegal under the Sherman Act; and 2) he also failed to show that any of the defendants are liable under either the Sherman Act or under California antitrust law.

Appellate Information

• Argued 02/15/2007
• Decided 09/26/2007
• Published 09/26/2007

Judges

• CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:, Before:  B. FLETCHER, RICHARD R. CLIFTON, and SANDRA S. IKUTA, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• A. William Urquhart, Thad A. Davis, Kent J. Bullard, Kathleen M. Sullivan (argued), Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, LLP, Los Angeles and Redwood Shores, CA;  for the appellant.


• For Appellees:
  
• Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr., Chief Assistant Attorney General Tom Greene, Senior Assistant Attorney General Dennis Eckhart, Deputy Attorney General Margaret Spencer, Deputy Attorney General Karen Leaf (argued), State of California, Sacramento, CA;  Darryl Snider (argued), James F. Speyer, Eric Shapland, Heller Ehrman LLP, Los Angeles, CA;  for the appellees.