Bingham Achieves Victory for Tempur-Pedic in Resale Price Case
The Associated Press, Dec. 11, 2007 — Boston partner
Bill Berkowitz and associates
Brandon Bigelow and
David Magee obtained a victory for longtime firm client Tempur-Pedic, persuading the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to dismiss with prejudice a class action complaint filed by a couple who alleged that Tempur-Pedic's minimum resale price policy violated the federal antitrust act. The plaintiffs alleged that Tempur-Pedic, rather than unilaterally imposing this policy as allowed under federal law, had actually engaged in a vertical price-fixing conspiracy with its retailers. The court granted Tempur-Pedic's motion to dismiss, finding that plaintiffs had failed to allege any harm to competition. The court also found the relevant market alleged by plaintiffs — the "visco-elastic foam mattress market" — to be nonsensical, holding that, "The defendants' visco-elastic foam mattresses may be very different from innerspring mattresses, but they are still a product on which people sleep." Boston associates
Josephine Deang,
Laura Langley,
Doreen Rachal and
David Penn assisted on the case, along with
John Schiebel and
Kathy Heithaus.