Guitar Center, NAMM Targeted In Pricing Lawsuit
September 24, 2009, 14 years ago
Billboard.biz is reporting:
Guitar Center and the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) are the targets of a recent lawsuit filed by law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro which claims the two conspired to fix retail pricing on fretted instruments.
The firm filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court in California, according to a release on the lawsuit, which claims NAMM “organized meetings and programs where competing retailers including Guitar Center, were encouraged to discuss and agree upon strategies for price fixing along with other anti-competitive agreements with manufacturers.”
The lawsuit also claims defendants conspired to squash competition from online retailers by collectively threatening to boycott manufacturers who sell through online competitors, among other tactics.
The suit seeks to represent anyone who purchased a fretted musical instrument from Guitar Center between Jan. 1, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2007.
