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An amended complaint was filed in U.S. District Court on June 30 adding Indianapolis-based Preston-Safeway Inc. as a plaintiff in the "grocery wars" case pitting Lowell's Discount Food stores against the Kroger and Cub Foods chains.
The case, originally filed Feb. 4, 1985, is considered unique and potentially precedent-setting in that it attempts to establish that two firms -- The Kroger Co. and Super Valu Stores Inc., which owns Cub Foods -- tried to secure a monopoly through predatory-pricing policies here.
Typically, antitrust cases are aimed at a single defendant who is seen as having a good chance to succeed at establishing a monopoly, thereby eliminating competition and gaining the power to raise prices to abnormally high levels.
All of the attorneys who have squared off as combatants in this legal skirmish contend they know of no other cases -- ever -- that have tried to establish that two companies could be the culprit in an antitrust monopoly action.
Whether Barnes & Thornburg, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, has a chance of proving its "dualopoly" allegations remains to be seen. But the local firm has succeededindrawingattention to its strategy and in rankling the Washington, D.C., lawyers representing Kroger and Super Valu.
"I know of no precedent for this at all," says Kroger attorney Mark J. Spooner of the D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter. "That's one of the things that's so disconcerting about this case."
Attorneys for Eden Prairie, Wis.-based Super Valu are equally distracted by the unique claim. Though he concedes -- somewhat pejoratively -- that the "dualopoly" charge is "imaginative," Super Valu attorney James E. Wesner believes the argument has "legal defects."