Comcast Corporation, et al., Petitioners v. Caroline Behrend et al. (569 U.S. 27)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 27, 2013 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 569 U.S. 27 · 133 S. Ct. 1426
- Decided
- March 27, 2013
- Term
- October Term 2012
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court. The District Court and the Court of Appeals approved certification of a class of more than 2 million current and former Comcast subscribers who seek damages for alleged violations of the federal antitrust laws. We consider whether certification was appropriate under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3). I Comcast Corporation and its subsidiaries, petitioners here, provide cable-television services to residential and commercial customers. From 1998 to 2007, petitioners engaged in a series of transactions that the parties have described as "clustering," a strategy of concentrating operations within a particular region. The region at issue here, which the parties have referred to as the Philadelphia "cluster" or the Philadelphia "Designated Market Area" (DMA), includes 16 counties located in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Petitioners pursued their clustering strategy by acquiring competitor cable providers in the region and swapping their own systems outside the region for competitor systems located in the region. For instance, in 2001, petitioners obtained Adelphia Communications' cable systems in the Philadelphia DMA, along with its 464,000 subscribers; in exchange, petitioners sold to Adelphia their systems in Palm Beach, Florida, and Los Angeles, California. As a result of nine clustering transactions,…
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