Federal Trade Commission v. Borden Company/Opinion of the Court

The Borden Company, respondent here, produces and sells evaporated milk under the Borden name, a nationally advertised brand. At the same time Borden packs and markets evaporated milk under various private brands owned by its customers. This milk is physically and chemically identical with the milk it distributes under its own brand but is sold at both the wholesale and retail level at prices regularly below those obtained for the Borden brand milk. The Federal Trade Commission found the milk sold under the Borden and the private labels to be of like grade and quality as required for the applicability of § 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act, held the price differential to be discriminatory within the meaning of the section, ascertained the requisite adverse effect on commerce, rejected Borden's claim of cost justification and consequently issued a cease-and-desist order. The Court of Appeals set aside the Commission's order on the sole ground that as a matter of law, the customer label milk was not of the same grade and quality as the milk sold under the Borden brand. 5 Cir., 339 F.2d 133. Because of the importance of this issue, which bears on the reach and coverage of the Robinson-Patman Act, we granted certiorari. 382 U.S. 807, 86 S.Ct. 31, 15 L.Ed.2d 57. We now reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand the case to that court for the determination of the remaining issues raised by respondent Borden in that court. Cf. Federal Trade Comm'n v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 363 U.S. 536, 542, 80 S.Ct. 1267, 4 L.Ed.2d 1385.

The position of Borden and of the Court of Appeals is that the determination of like grade and quality, which is a threshold finding essential to the applicability of § 2(a), may not be based solely on the physical properties of the products without regard to the brand names they bear and the relative public acceptance these brands enjoy-'consideration should be given to all commercially significant distinctions which affect market value, whether they be physical or promotional.' 339 F.2d, at 137. Here, because the milk bearing the Borden brand regularly sold at a higher price than did the milk with a buyer's label, the court considered the products to be 'commercially' different and hence of different 'grade' for the purposes of § 2(a), even though they were physically identical and of equal quality. Although a mere difference in brand would not in itself demonstrate a difference in grade, decided consumer preference for one brand over another, reflected in the willingness to pay a higher price for the well-known brand, was, in the view of the Court of Appeals, sufficient to differentiate chemically identical products and to place the price differential beyond the reach of § 2(a).

We reject this construction of § 2(a), as did both the examiner and the Commission in this case. The Commission's view is that labels do not differentiate products for the purpose of determining grade or quality, even though the one label may have more customer appeal and command a higher price in the marketplace from a substantial segment of the public. That this is the Commission's long-standing interpretation of the present Act, as well as of § 2 of the Clayton Act before its amendment by the Robinson-Patman Act, may be gathered from the Commission's decisions dating back to 1936. Whitaker Cable Corp., 51 F.T.C. 958 (1955); Page Dairy Co., 50 F.T.C. 395 (1953); United States Rubber Co., 46 F.T.C. 998 (1950); United States Rubber Co., 28 F.T.C. 1489 (1939); Hansen Inoculator Co., 26 F.T.C. 303 (1938); Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 22 F.T.C. 232 (1936). These views of the agency are entitled to respect Federal Trade Comm'n v. Mandel Brothers, Inc., 359 U.S. 385, 391, 79 S.Ct. 818, 3 L.Ed.2d 893, and represent a more reasonable construction of the statute than that offered by the Court of Appeals.

Obviously there is nothing in the language of the statute indicating that grade, as distinguished from quality, is not to be determined by the characteristics of the product itself, but by consumer preferences, brand acceptability or what customers think of it and are willing to pay for it. Moreover, what legislative history there is concerning this question supports the Commission's construction of the statute rather than that of the Court of Appeals.

During the 1936 hearings on the proposed amendments to § 2 of the Clayton Act, the attention of the Congress was specifically called to the question of the applicability of § 2 to the practice of a manufacturer selling his product under his nationally advertised brand at a different price than he charged when the product was sold under a private label. Because it was feared that the Act would require the elimination of such price differentials, Hearings on H.R. 4995 before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 355, and because private brands 'would (thus) be put out of business by the nationally advertised brands,' it was suggested that the proposed § 2(a) be amended so as to apply only to sales of commodities of 'like grade, quality and brand.' (Emphasis added.) Id., at 421. There was strong objection to the amendment and it was not adopted by the Committee. The rejection of this amendment assumes particular significance since it was pointed out in the hearings that the legality of price differentials between proprietary and private brands was then pending before the Federal Trade Commission in Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 22 F.T.C. 232. By the time the Committee Report was written, the Commission had decided Goodyear. The report quoted from the decision and interpreted it as holding that Goodyear had violated the Act because 'at no time did it offer to its own dealers prices on Goodyear brands of tires which were comparable to prices at which respondent was selling tires of equal or comparable quality to Sears, Roebuck & Co.' H.R.Rep. No. 2287, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 4.

During the debates on the bill, Representative Patman, one of the bill's sponsors, was asked about the private label issue. His brief response is wholly consistent with the Commission's interpretation of § 2(a), 80 Cong.Rec. 8115:

'MR. TAYLOR of South Carolina. There has grown up a practice     on the part of manufacturers of making certain brands of      goods for particular chain stores. Is there anything in this     bill calculated to remedy that situation?

'MR. PATMAN. * *  * I have not time to discuss that feature,      but the bill will protect the independents in that way,      because they will have to sell to the independents at the      same price for the same product where they put the same      quality of merchandise in a package, and this will remedy the      situation to which the gentleman refers.

'Mr. TAYLOR of South Carolina. Irrespective of the brand.

'Mr. PATMAN. Yes; so long as it is the same quality. * *  *

The Commission's construction of the statute also appears to us to further the purpose and policy of the Robinson-Patman Act. Subject to specified exceptions and defenses, § 2(a) proscribes unequal treatment of different customers in comparable transactions, but only if there is the requisite effect upon competition, actual or potential. But if the transactions are deemed to involve goods of disparate grade or quality, the section has no application at all and the Commission never reaches either the issue of discrimination or that of anticompetitive impact. We doubt that Congress intended to foreclose these inquiries in situations where a single seller markets the identical product under several different brands, whether his own, his customers' or both. Such transactions are too laden with potential discrimination and adverse competitive effect to be excluded from the reach of § 2(a) by permitting a difference in grade to be established by the label alone or by the label and its consumer appeal.

If two products, physically identical but differently branded, are to be deemed of different grade because the seller regularly and successfully markets some quantity of both at different prices, the seller could, as far as § 2(a) is concerned, make either product available to some customers and deny it to others, however discriminatory this might be and however damaging to competition. Those who were offered only one of the two products would be barred from competing for those customers who want or might buy the other. The retailer who was permitted to buy and sell only the more expensive brand would have no chance to sell to those who always buy the cheaper product or to convince others, by experience or otherwise, of the fact which he and all other dealers already know-that the cheaper product is actually identical with that carrying the more expensive label.

The seller, to escape the Act, would have only to succeed in selling some unspecified amount of each product to some unspecified portion of his customers, however large or small the price differential might be. The seller's pricing and branding policy, by being successful, would apparently validate itself by creating a difference in 'grade' and thus taking itself beyond the purview of the Act.

Our holding neither ignores the economic realities of the marketplace nor denies that some labels will command a higher price than others, at least from some portion of the public. But it does mean that 'the economic factors inherent in brand names and national advertising should not be considered in the jurisdictional inquiry under the statutory 'like grade and quality' test.' Report of The Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws 158 (1955). And it does mean that transactions like those involved in this case may be examined by the Commission under § 2(a). The Commission will determine, subject to judicial review, whether the differential under attack is discriminatory within the meaning of the Act, whether competition may be injured, and whether the differential is cost-justified or is defensible as a good-faith effort to meet the price of a competitor. '(T)angible consumer preferences as between branded and unbranded commodities should receive due legal recognition in the more flexible 'injury' and 'cost justification' provisions of the statute.' Id., at 159 This, we think, is precisely what Congress intended. The arguments for exempting private brand selling from § 2(a) are, therefore, more appropriately addressed to the Congress than to this Court.

The Court of Appeals suggested that the Commissioner's views of like grade and quality for the purposes of § 2(a) cannot be squared with its rulings in cases where a seller presents the defense under § 2(b) that he is in good faith meeting the equally low price of a competitor. In those cases, it is said, the Commission has given full recognition to the significance of the higher prices commanded by the nationally advertised brand 'in holding that a seller who reduces the price of his premium product to the level of his nonpremium competitiors is not merely meeting competition, but undercutting it.' 339 F.2d, at 138.

The Commission, on the other hand, sees no inconsistency between its present decision and its § 2(b) cases. In its view, the issue under § 2(b) of whether a seller's lower price is a good-faith meeting of competition involves considerations different from those presented by the jurisdictional question of 'like grade and quality' under § 2(a).

We need not resolve these contrary position. The issue we have here relates to § 2(a), not to § 2(b), and we think the Commission has resolved it correctly. The § 2(b) cases are not now before us and we do not venture to decide them. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

Reversed and remanded.

Mr. Justice STEWART, with whom Mr. Justice HARLAN joins, dissenting.