Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/387

 546US1

176

Unit: $U15

[08-22-08 15:43:12] PAGES PGT: OPIN

VOLVO TRUCKS NORTH AMERICA, INC. v. REEDERSIMCO GMC, INC. Opinion of the Court

ingly receives the beneﬁt of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them. . . .” 15 U. S. C. § 13(a). Pursuant to § 4 of the Clayton Act, a private plaintiff may recover threefold for actual injury sustained as a result of a violation of the Robinson-Patman Act. See 15 U. S. C. § 15(a); J. Truett Payne Co. v. Chrysler Motors Corp., 451 U. S. 557, 562 (1981). Mindful of the purposes of the Act and of the antitrust laws generally, we have explained that Robinson-Patman does not “ban all price differences charged to different pur­ chasers of commodities of like grade and quality,” Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U. S. 209, 220 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted); rather, the Act proscribes “price discrimination only to the extent that it threatens to injure competition,” ibid. Our decisions describe three categories of competitive injury that may give rise to a Robinson-Patman Act claim: primary line, sec­ ondary line, and tertiary line. Primary-line cases entail con­ duct—most conspicuously, predatory pricing—that injures competition at the level of the discriminating seller and its direct competitors. See, e. g., id., at 220–222; see also Ho­ venkamp ¶ 2301a, pp. 4–6. Secondary-line cases, of which this is one, involve price discrimination that injures competi­ tion among the discriminating seller’s customers (here, Vol­ vo’s dealerships); cases in this category typically refer to “fa­ vored” and “disfavored” purchasers. See ibid.; Texaco Inc. v. Hasbrouck, 496 U. S. 543, 558, n. 15 (1990). Tertiary-line cases involve injury to competition at the level of the pur­ chaser’s customers. See Areeda ¶ 601e, p. 907. To establish the secondary-line injury of which it com­ plains, Reeder had to show that (1) the relevant Volvo truck sales were made in interstate commerce; (2) the trucks were of “like grade and quality”; (3) Volvo “discriminate[d] in price between” Reeder and another purchaser of Volvo trucks; and (4) “the effect of such discrimination may be. . . to injure, destroy, or prevent competition” to the advantage of a fa­