United States Ninth Circuit

In a criminal antitrust case that stems from an international conspiracy between Taiwanese and Korean electronics manufacturers to fix prices for Liquid Crystal Display panels in violation of the Sherman Act, defendants' convictions and the sentence of the only defendant to challenge it, are affirmed, where: 1) venue in the Northern District of California was proper; 2) defendants waived the argument that an extraterritoriality defense bars their convictions, and viewing the jury instructions as a whole, nothing misled the jury as to its task; 3) the district court properly applied a per se analysis under the Sherman Act, rather than the rule of reason, to this horizontal price-fixing scheme; 4) the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982, (FTAIA) did not bar the prosecution because the government sufficiently proved that the defendants engaged in import trade; 5) the fine imposed on defendant AU Optronics pursuant to the Alternative Fine Statute was proper, as the statute permits the fine to be based on the gross gains to all the coconspirators, and does not require joint and several liability or imposition of a "one recovery" rule.

Appellate Information

• Decided 07/10/2014
• Published 07/10/2014

Judges

• McKEOWN

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel