United States v. Borden Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
40 federal appellate · 4 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 71 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2016 · most notably Permian Basin Area Rate Cases (1968), Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989)
40 federal appellate · 4 district · 1 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. § 1 (§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act) · 15 U.S.C. § 13 (§ 2 of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914) · 15 U.S.C. § 29
Relies on Brown Shoe Co. v. United States · Federal Trade Commission v. Morton Salt Co. · Lehigh Valley Cooperative Farmers, Inc. v. United States · Automatic Canteen Co. of America v. Federal Trade Commission · United States v. Borden Co.
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 71 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“such selfsameness as to make the averaging of the cost of dealing with the group a valid and reasonable indicium of the cost of dealing with any specific group member.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In this regard we do not find the classifications submitted by the ap-pellees to have been shown to be of sufficient homogeneity. Certainly, the cost factors considered were not necessarily encompassed within the manner in which a customer is owned. * * * For instance, the favorable cost comparisons between the chains and the larger independents were for the greater part controlled by the higher average volume of the chain stores in comparison to the average volume of the 80-member class to which these independents were relegated. * * * [S]uch a grouping for cost justification purposes, composed as it is of some independents having volumes comparable to, and in some cases larger than, that of the chain stores, created artificial disparities between the larger independents and the chain stores. It is like averaging one horse and one rabbit. As the Federal Trade Commission said in In the Matter of Champion Spark Plug Co., 50 F.T.C. 30 , 43 (1953): ‘A cost justification based on the difference between an estimated average cost of selling to one or two large customers and an average cost of selling to all other customers cannot be accepted as a defense to a charge of price discrimination.’ ” 370 U.S. at 469-470 , 82 S.Ct. at 1314.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Another suspect feature is that classifications based on services received by independents were apparently frozen — making it impossible for them to obtain larger discounts by electing not to receive the cost-determinative services — with no justifiable business reason offered in support of the practice.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.