Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., LTD, et al. v. Zenith Radio Corp. et al. (475 U.S. 574)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 25, 1986 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 475 U.S. 574 · 106 S. Ct. 1348
- Decided
- March 25, 1986
- Term
- October Term 1985
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Powell
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Powell delivered the opinion of the Court. This case requires that we again consider the standard district courts must apply when deciding whether to grant summary judgment in an antitrust conspiracy case. I — I Stating the facts of this case is a daunting task. The opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit runs to 69 pages; the primary opinion of the District Court is more than three times as long. In re Japanese Electronic Products Antitrust Litigation, 723 F. 2d 238 (CA3 1983); 513 F. Supp. 1100 (ED Pa. 1981). Two respected District Judges each have authored a number of opinions in this case; the published ones alone would fill an entire volume of the Federal Supplement. In addition, the parties have filed a 40-volume appendix in this Court that is said to contain the essence of the evidence on which the District Court and the Court of Appeals based their respective decisions. We will not repeat what these many opinions have stated and restated, or summarize the mass of documents that constitute the record on appeal. Since we review only the standard applied by the Court of Appeals in deciding this case, and not the weight assigned to particular pieces of evidence, we find it unnecessary to state the facts in great detail. What follows is a summary of this case’s long history. A Petitioners, defendants below, are 21 corporations that manufacture or sell…
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