MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case raises important questions concerning the inter-relationship of the antimerger and private damages action provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act.
I
Petitioner is one of the two largest manufacturers of bowling equipment in the United States. Respondents are three of the 10 bowling centers owned by Treadway Companies, Inc. Since 1965, petitioner has acquired and operated a large number of bowling centers, including six in the markets in which respondents operate. Respondents instituted this action contending that these acquisitions violated various provisions of the antitrust laws.
In the late 1950's, the bowling industry expanded rapidly, and petitioner's sales of lanes, automatic pinsetters, and ancillary equipment rose accordingly.
In the early 1960's, the bowling industry went into a sharp decline. Petitioner's sales quickly dropped to preboom levels. Moreover, petitioner experienced great difficulty in collecting money owed it; by the end of 1964 over $100,000,000, or more than 25%, of petitioner's accounts were more than 90 days delinquent. Id., at A1884. Repossessions rose dramatically, but attempts to sell or lease the repossessed equipment met with only limited success.
To meet this difficulty, petitioner began acquiring and
At issue here are acquisitions by petitioner in the three markets in which respondents are located: Pueblo, Colo., Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and Paramus, N. J. In 1965, petitioner acquired one defaulting center in Pueblo, one in Poughkeepsie, and two in the Paramus area. In 1969, petitioner acquired a third defaulting center in the Paramus market, and in 1970 petitioner acquired a fourth. Petitioner closed its Poughkeepsie center in 1969 after three years of unsuccessful operation; the Paramus center acquired in 1970 also proved unsuccessful, and in March 1973 petitioner gave notice that it would cease operating the center when its lease expired. The other four centers were operational at the time of trial.
Respondents initiated this action in June 1966, alleging, inter alia, that these acquisitions might substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in violation of § 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. § 18.
Trial was held in the spring of 1973, following an initial mistrial due to a hung jury. To establish a § 7 violation, respondents sought to prove that because of its size, petitioner had the capacity to lessen competition in the markets it had entered by driving smaller competitors out of business. To establish damages, respondents attempted to show that had petitioner allowed the defaulting centers to close, respondents' profits would have increased. At respondents' request, the jury was instructed in accord with respondents' theory as to the nature of the violation and the basis for damages. The jury returned a verdict in favor of respondents in the amount of $2,358,030, which represented the minimum estimate by respondents of the additional income they would have realized had the acquired centers been closed. Id., at A1737. As required by law, the District Court trebled the damages.
The Court of Appeals, while endorsing the legal theories upon which respondents' claim was based, reversed the judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings. NBO Industries Treadway Cos. v. Brunswick Corp., supra. The court found that a properly instructed jury could have concluded that petitioner was a "giant" whose entry into a "market of pygmies" might lessen horizontal retail competition, because such a "giant"
The court also found that there was sufficient evidence to permit a jury to conclude that but for petitioner's actions, the acquired centers would have gone out of business. Id.,
Both sides petitioned this Court for writs of certiorari. Brunswick's petition challenged the theory the Court of Appeals had approved for awarding damages; the plaintiffs' petition challenged the Court of Appeals' conclusions with respect to the jury instructions and the appropriateness of a divestiture order.
II
The issue for decision is a narrow one. Petitioner does not presently contest the Court of Appeals' conclusion that a properly instructed jury could have found the acquisitions unlawful. Nor does petitioner challenge the Court of Appeals' determination that the evidence would support a finding that had petitioner not acquired these centers, they would have gone out of business and respondents' income would have increased. Petitioner questions only whether antitrust damages are available where the sole injury alleged is that competitors were continued in business, thereby denying respondents an anticipated increase in market shares.
Section 4, in contrast, is in essence a remedial provision. It provides treble damages to "[a]ny person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws . . . ." Of course, treble damages also play an important role in penalizing wrongdoers and deterring wrongdoing, as we also have frequently observed. Perma Life Mufflers v. International Parts Corp., 392 U.S. 134, 139 (1968); Fortner Enterprises v. United States Steel Corp., 394 U.S. 495, 502 (1969); Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, 395 U.S. 100, 130 (1969); Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co., 405 U.S. 251, 262 (1972). It nevertheless is true that the treble-damages provision, which makes awards available only to injured parties, and measures the awards by a
Intermeshing a statutory prohibition against acts that have a potential to cause certain harms with a damages action intended to remedy those harms is not without difficulty. Plainly, to recover damages respondents must prove more than that petitioner violated § 7, since such proof establishes only that injury may result. Respondents contend that the only additional element they need demonstrate is that they are in a worse position than they would have been had petitioner not committed those acts. The Court of Appeals agreed,
Every merger of two existing entities into one, whether lawful or unlawful, has the potential for producing economic readjustments that adversely affect some persons. But Congress has not condemned mergers on that account; it has condemned them only when they may produce anticompetitive effects. Yet under the Court of Appeals' holding, once a merger is found to violate § 7, all dislocations caused by the merger are actionable, regardless of whether those dislocations have anything to do with the reason the merger was condemned. This holding would make § 4 recovery entirely fortuitous, and would authorize damages for losses which are of no concern to the antitrust laws.
Both of these consequences are well illustrated by the facts of this case. If the acquisitions here were unlawful, it is because they brought a "deep pocket" parent into a market of "pygmies." Yet respondents' injury—the loss of income that would have accrued had the acquired centers gone bankrupt —bears no relationship to the size of either the acquiring company or its competitors. Respondents would have suffered the identical "loss"—but no compensable injury—had the acquired centers instead obtained refinancing or been purchased by "shallow pocket" parents, as the Court of Appeals itself acknowledged, 523 F. 2d, at 279.
But the antitrust laws are not merely indifferent to the injury claimed here. At base, respondents complain that by acquiring the failing centers petitioner preserved competition, thereby depriving respondents of the benefits of increased concentration. The damages respondents obtained are designed to provide them with the profits they would have realized had competition been reduced. The antitrust laws, however, were enacted for "the protection of competition, not competitors," Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S., at 320. It is inimical to the purposes of these laws to award damages for the type of injury claimed here.
Of course, Congress is free, if it desires, to mandate damages awards for all dislocations caused by unlawful mergers despite the peculiar consequences of so doing. But because of these consequences, "we should insist upon a clear expression of a congressional purpose," Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co., 405 U. S., at 264, before attributing such an intent to Congress. We can find no such expression in either the language or the legislative history of § 4. To the contrary, it is far from clear that the loss of windfall profits that would have accrued had the acquired centers failed even constitutes "injury" within the meaning of § 4. And it is quite clear that if respondents were injured, it was not "by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws": while respondents' loss occurred "by reason of" the unlawful acquisitions, it did not occur "by reason of" that which made the acquisitions unlawful.
III
We come, then, to the question of appropriate disposition of this case. At the very least, petitioner is entitled to a new trial, not only because of the instructional errors noted by the Court of Appeals that are not at issue here, see n. 6, supra, but also because the District Court's instruction
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
FootNotes
The complaint also named as plaintiffs National Bowl-O-Mat, the predecessor to Treadway Companies, and the seven other bowling center subsidiaries of Treadway. These plaintiffs were unsuccessful on all counts, however, and they did not appeal the judgments entered against them.
The Court of Appeals also held, id., at 275, that in instructing the jury on the statutory requirement that the acquired company be "engaged . . . in commerce," the District Court had not anticipated this Court's decision in United States v. American Bldg. Maint. Industries, 422 U.S. 271 (1975), which read the "in commerce" requirement more restrictively than had the leading decision of the Third Circuit, Transamerica Corp. v. Board of Governors, 206 F.2d 163, cert. denied, 346 U.S. 901 (1953). Indeed, the court indicated that there might not be sufficient evidence in the record to satisfy the "in commerce" test. 523 F. 2d, at 271. The court concluded, however, that given the change in the law, it would be "unjust" to find the evidence insufficient and thereby deny plaintiffs an opportunity to meet the new test on retrial.
No action has been taken with respect to respondents' petition.
"Does not the `failing company' principle require dismissal of a treble-damage action based on alleged violations of Section 7 of the Clayton Act where the plaintiffs' entire damage theory is based on the premise that the `acquired' businesses would have failed and disappeared from the market had the defendant not kept them alive by making the challenged `acquisitions?' " Pet. for Cert. 3.
In light of our holding, we have no occasion to consider the applicability of the failing-company defense to the conglomerate-like acquisitions involved here.
When Congress enacted the Clayton Act in 1914, it "extend[ed] the remedy under section 7 of the Sherman Act" to persons injured by virtue of any antitrust violation. H. R. Rep. No. 627, 63d Cong., 2d Sess., 14 (1914). The initial House debates concerning provisions related to private damages actions reveal that these actions were conceived primarily as "open[ing] the door of justice to every man, whenever he may be injured by those who violate the antitrust laws, and giv[ing] the injured party ample damages for the wrong suffered." 51 Cong. Rec. 9073 (1914) (remarks of Rep. Webb); see, e. g., id., at 9079 (Rep. Volstead), 9270 (Rep. Carlin), 9414-9417, 9466-9467, 9487-9495. The House debates following the conference committee report, however, indicate that the sponsors of the bill also saw treble-damages suits as an important means of enforcing the law. Id., at 16274-16275 (Rep. Webb), 16317-16319 (Rep. Floyd). In the Senate there was virtually no discussion of the enforcement value of private actions, even though the bill was attacked as lacking meaningful sanctions, e. g., id., at 15818-15821 (Sen. Reed), 16042-16046 (Sen. Norris).
This does not necessarily mean, as the Court of Appeals feared, 523 F. 2d, at 272, that § 4 plaintiffs must prove an actual lessening of competition in order to recover. The short-term effect of certain anticompetitive behavior —predatory below-cost pricing, for example—may be to stimulate price competition. But competitors may be able to prove antitrust injury before they actually are driven from the market and competition is thereby lessened. Of course, the case for relief will be strongest where competition has been diminished. See, e. g., Calnetics Corp. v. Volkswagen of America, Inc., 532 F.2d 674 (CA9 1976); Metric Hosiery Co. v. Spartans Industries, Inc., 50 F. R. D. 50 (SDNY 1970); Klingsberg, Bull's Eyes and Carom Shots: Complications and Conflicts on Standing to Sue and Causation Under Section 4 of the Clayton Act, 16 Antitrust Bull. 351, 364 (1971).
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