Armstrong Surgical Center, Inc. v. Armstrong County Memorial Hospital’s Empirical Analysis
185 F.3d 154 · 1999
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 6 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably 174 N.C. App. 266 - Good Hope Hospital, Inc. v. North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services (2005), Twombly v. Bell Atlantic Corp. (2005)
11 federal appellate · 6 district · 5 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 2 (§ 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act)
Relies on Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. · Parker v. Brown · California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited · United Mine Workers v. Pennington · Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food MacHinery & Chemical Corp.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[E]ven where the same petitioning conduct might give rise to antitrust liability for injury directly caused to a competitor in the marketplace, if relief is sought solely for injury as to which the state would enjoy immunity under Parker , the private petitioner also enjoys immunity.... * * * * JY- * In sum, where, as here, all of the plaintiffs alleged injuries result from state action, antitrust liability cannot be imposed on a private party who induced the state action by means of concerted anticompetitive activity.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“First, the lawsuit must be objectively baseless in the sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits. If an objective litigant could conclude that the suit is reasonably calculated to elicit a favorable outcome, the suit is immunized under Noerr, and an antitrust claim premised on the sham exception must fail. Only if challenged litigation is objectively merit-less may a court examine the litigant’s subjective motivation. Under this second part of our definition of sham, the court should focus on whether the baseless lawsuit conceals an attempt to interfere directly with the business relationships of a competitor, through the use of governmental process-as opposed to the outcome of that process-as an anticom-petitive weapon. This two-tiered process requires the plaintiff to disprove the challenged lawsuit’s legal viability before the court will entertain evidence of the suit’s economic viability.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“if the [immunity-]invalidating “conspiracy” is limited to one that involves some element of unlawfulness (beyond mere anticompetitive motivation), the invalidation would have nothing to do with the policies of the antitrust laws. In Noerr itself, where the private party “deliberately deceived the public and public officials” in its successful lobbying campaign, we said that “deception, reprehensible as it is, can be of no consequence so far as the Sherman Act is concerned.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.