Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 15, 1990 TAG: 9006150211
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The class action, filed Thursday, said Hartman and many other merchants and individual consumers sustained substantial losses as a result of price fixing by the two bottlers for almost nine years, from January 1977 to November 1985.
The two major Roanoke Valley bottlers agreed to raise wholesale prices by increasing the prices listed in promotional letters and limiting discounts from published prices, according to the antitrust suit.
Hartman's suit said the two bottlers held meetings and telephone conversations to agree on prices and discounts for soft drinks.
The bottlers, he said, approved chain marketing agreements, monitored and enforced agreements, and took steps to conceal the conspiracy.
In Charlotte, Lauren Steele, corporate affairs vice president for Coca-Cola Consolidated, parent of the Roanoke Coca-Cola firm, said he knew "absolutely nothing about the suit . . . We're not engaged in any antitrust activity."
The issues raised in Hartman's suit are related to the case of two former executives and the sales manager of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Roanoke who were convicted on price-fixing charges in U.S. District Court in 1988. The three men pleaded no contest to charges they had bilked thousands of dollars from soft drink consumers in the scheme.
The three - John D. Rogan and Charles H. Beach, the ex-executives, and Kenneth St. Clair of Roanoke - were fined a total of $137,500 and placed on probation for three years.
As the result of a plea agreement, the Justice Department did not charge the Roanoke Pepsi-Cola bottler under antitrust laws.
Richmond area Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola bottlers settled a similar class-action suit by a Richmond area small-business operator for $4.6 million last year, according to Gary Hershner, a Richmond lawyer who worked on both the Richmond and Roanoke suits.
A similar suit was settled by the bottlers in the Baltimore-Washington area last year, Hershner said.
Since Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola have exclusive franchises to manufacture and distribute soft drinks in the Roanoke area, Hartman said, he and other merchants and consumers were prevented from buying the drinks from outside bottlers whose prices were not inflated by the conspiracy.
Hartman said the two bottlers established, raised and maintained prices at "artificially high and non-competitive levels."
He did not ask the court for a specific amount in damages but requested that he and others in his class recover three times the damages the court determines they have sustained as a result of price fixing.
by CNB