On September 3, 2019, Judge Jeffrey S. White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed all claims asserted against Micron Technology, Inc. in Jones, et al. v. Micron Technology Inc., et al., Case No. 4:18-cv-02518-JSW. Plaintiffs, indirect purchasers of products containing the memory chip DRAM, had sought to bring federal and state antitrust claims against Micron and other DRAM manufacturers alleging a conspiracy to inflate the price of DRAM by tacitly coordinating to limit its supply. In its opinion, the Court dismissed all of Plaintiffs’ claims for failure to state a claim because the “factual allegations–public statements and responsive [behavior], membership in trade associations, market conditions—are just as consistent with innocent behavior as unlawful behavior, and therefore do not ‘nudge’ the conspiracy from conceivable to plausible.” In addressing allegations concerning public statements made by Micron discussing capacity, the Court found that such statements “are consistent with lawful conscious parallelism.” The Court also separately held that Plaintiffs lack Article III standing, lack antitrust standing, and insufficiently pled or lack standing to bring various state competition laws.
The decision was profiled in Law360 and Global Competition Review (subscription may be required).
The Simpson Thacher team included Buzz Frahn, John Terzaken, Abram Ellis, Jonathan Porter, Katelyn Benton, Adrienne Baxley, Michael Morey and Justin Calderon. Summer Associate Matthew Preston also provided valuable assistance.