Nexstar Media Group, Inc., et al. v. DirecTV, LLC

To bring an antitrust damages action, a private plaintiff must first establish “antitrust standing.” The antitrust standing doctrine sets a higher bar than Article III and requires that a plaintiff’s injury be proximately caused by the alleged violation and be the type of injury that the antitrust laws were designed to address. Consistent with that principle, the Ninth and Tenth Circuits have held that a plaintiff who declines to purchase an allegedly overpriced product generally lacks antitrust standing because its damages are necessarily speculative and indirect. But in the decision below, the Second Circuit split from that settled rule and held that a plaintiff had antitrust standing to pursue a price-fixing claim based on hypothetical lost revenue indirectly caused by the decision not to purchase from the alleged conspiracy. The question presented is: Whether a plaintiff has antitrust standing to recover purported downstream losses flowing from its decision not to purchase an allegedly price-fixed product.