Federal Prescription Service, Inc. v. American Pharmaceutical Ass'n’s Empirical Analysis
663 F.2d 253 · 1981
Citation profile
32 federal appellate · 19 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 84 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2018 · most notably Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (1993), McI Communications Corporation McI v. American Telephone and Telegraph Company (1983)
32 federal appellate · 19 district · 4 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
Relies on Scheuer v. Rhodes · United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · First Nat. Bank of Ariz. v. Cities Service Co. · Butz v. Economou · Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc.
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 84 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Anticompetitive intent alone is not enough. Nor is it sufficient that the persons engaged in lobbying activity also engaged in “a pattern of actions.” Both factors were present in Noerr, in which the Court held the complained of activities were beyond the scope of the antitrust laws. What is needed in addition is proof that the lobbyists subverted the integrity of the governmental process, that they effectively barred Federal’s [plaintiff’s] access to these processes, or that the nature of these processes made their invocation something other than the “political activity,” that was recognized by the Noerr-Pennington-Trucking Unlimited line of cases to be beyond the scope of the Sherman Act.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Accepting as true that the board members acted in conformance with American’s economic goals rather than solely in selfless dedication to the public good, we decline, given the availability of a better explanation for their conduct, to treat that parallel conduct as significant probative evidence of an unlawful conspiracy with American. Although parallel behavior may support an inference of conspiracy when the alleged co-conspirators have acted in a way inconsistent with independent pursuit of economic self-interest, that inference is warranted only when a theory of rational, independent action is less attractive than that of concerted action. [Citations omitted.] The behavior of the Iowa Board in this case is not the kind that could only make sense in the context of the behavior of others; rather, it can be persuasively explained by the exercise of rational, independent judgment. If we take as true Federal’s claim that the Board was dominated by community pharmacists pursuing commercial self-interest, then the Board’s action in attempting to hinder Federal’s operation is explained as simply an effort to serve the economic interests of the Board members and their professional peers. If instead Federal is wrong and the Board was actually seeking in good faith to advance the public interest, the inference that it unlawfully conspired with American is weaker yet. We thus conclude that the most convincing explanations of the Board’s conduct do not support the theory that Board me”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“First, as to American’s communications to the state boards, we decline to assign probative value to the fact that some state boards responded favorably ... It would make a nullity of Noerr to hold the state board to be a co-conspirator, and the petitioning activity directed at it thus unprotected, on the basis that the petitioning was successful. That a public official is persuaded by the entreaty of a lobbyist does not make him the lobbyist’s co-conspirator.”
2 later decisions 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.