From Courthouse News:
The local, off-campus competitor of an Illinois community college bookstore claims in court that the school is trying to put it out of business by selling textbooks below cost and withholding course book information.
Joliet Textbooks, which owns a store selling textbooks and related items across from the entrance of Joliet Junior College’s campus in Joliet, Ill., filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Will County accusing JJC of violating the Illinois Antitrust Act.
The off-campus store claims that JJC “engaged in a concerted scheme to thwart competition in the market for the sale of used and new textbooks and to destroy competition in the marketplace by undermining plaintiff’s business through anti-competitive pricing strategies.”
The school’s official bookstore, a half-mile from Joliet Textbooks, “enjoys certain institutional advantages over a private sector competitor like plaintiff,” such as not paying rent and not needing to generate a profit to stay open, the complaint states.
Both stores purchase their new and used textbooks from the same sources, says Joliet Textbooks, and the standard practice is to charge 20 to 30 percent above cost.
However, JJC has allegedly been selling textbooks to its students below cost and is giving out rebates and calculating sales taxes on the artificially lower price.
Link to the rest at Courthouse News and thanks to Nate for the tip.
PG is not familiar with the Illinois Antitrust Act, so he can’t opine about the plaintiff’s chances in court.
He was, however, reminded, of an antitrust suit by the American Booksellers Association and a number of independent bookstores against Barnes & Noble and Borders in 2001. The principal claim was that the big bookstores received secret discounts from big publishers and distributors. The case was ultimately settled before a final verdict.
My hometown!
I didn’t see this in our own local news, but I know the store and the college well.
As an aside, JJC is the first (and thus the oldest) community college in the United States.
And we’ve heard of instructors handing out or making available the course material — which is cutting that poor bookstore out of even more profit, best sue them too while they’re at it.
“… and the standard practice is to charge 20 to 30 percent above cost.”
Whoa — add Amazon to the sue list as they don’t do ‘the standard practices’ either!
This isn’t a law school is it? They can let the kids handle the case (supervised of course).