Amicus Brief: District of Columbia v. Amazon.com, Inc.
In D.C. v. Amazon.com, the Court ruled that the complaint was implausible due to the fact that D.C. chose not to identify specific sellers. However, D.C. argued that the Court applied the wrong standard when reviewing the motion to dismiss. As such, COSAL wrote a brief in support of D.C.’s appeal to reverse the Court’s dismissal. Naming specific third-party or first-party sellers is not necessary to meet the plausibility standard when asserting an antitrust claim. For one, information of that level of specificity is often difficult to provide without discovery. Not only is that information not always readily available, but also not all plaintiffs may want to disclose their names at this time. Requiring complaints to address specific sellers would in effect harm antitrust enforcement, as fear of retaliation from and confrontation with large monopolists would deter entities from standing out against anticompetitive conduct. Therefore, COSAL urged the Court to reverse the judgement dismissing the complaint. The brief was written by Jessica Kahn, Victoria Sims, and Kristen Marttila.
