From The Guardian UK
By Toni Locy

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether two oil companies could be sued for setting up now-defunct joint ventures that allegedly inflated gas prices in the late 1990s. In spirited questioning, the justices – led by Chief Justice John Roberts – seemed skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for 23,000 gas distributors that ChevronTexaco Corp. and Shell Oil Co. violated antitrust laws and fixed prices.

Roberts described the gas distributors’ arguments as “a very artificial hook.” Other justices, including David Souter and Stephen Breyer, wondered whether the arguments were weak because the price was set by the legitimately formed joint venture.

In 1998, when ChevronTexaco was still Texaco, the company joined with Shell to form Equilon Enterprises and Motiva Enterprises to handle refining and marketing of their gasoline. Equilon focused on the western United States, while Motiva handled the eastern United States and Saudi Arabia.

The two ventures charged the same wholesale price for Texaco and Shell gasoline, which were sold as separate products under the companies’ brand names. In 1999, several gas distributors filed a class-action lawsuit in California, alleging that Texaco and Shell had used Equilon to fix gas prices in violation of antitrust provisions of the Sherman Act.

Read more Price-Fixing