168: The Fix Is In
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Consider for a moment all the situations where you stop and wonder, "Am I being paranoid? Is something wrong happening right in front of me, or is that just my imagination?" People I know were complaining about the high price of milk, and my father-in-law, for example, who lives in Detroit would come into town and say, "My gosh, your milk is like a dollar higher than what we pay." This is Andy Hale from attorney in Chicago. On this milk thing cut his attention, he had already sued a grocery store for anti-competitive practices. I'm going to look into the price of milk he founded the two big supermarkets in Chicago at the time, Dominics and Jewel, not only had the same price, but it was more than anybody else's price in town. And that price always seemed to change at the same time. Because we followed the price of milk from about $3.09 up to $3.19 to $3.29, I forget how many exact price bumps there were, but we got to $3.69. And as far as we could tell, whenever one change, it seems like the other one changed simultaneously. At most grocery stores at other cities in the country, it was about a dollar cheaper. But here's the crazy thing. Even though Andy Hale knows all that, that still doesn't prove anything illegal is going on. It still doesn't mean that the two stores rank a hoot, they're sitting down in the back room somewhere, hatching evil plans to drive up the prices of the dairy products that make the city run. To try out what's illegal for stores to go out and see what the competition's doing, it's illegal for them to match prices if they're low, stay competitive, we all benefit from that. It's illegal for them to raise prices if they think they can get away with it. Dominics and Jewel say that is all that's going on here. And Andy Hale doesn't have proof of anything else. The difficult thing with price fixing cases, the difficult thing with conspiracy cases is proving an agreement. And usually it's very difficult because people don't admit to that. And that's why these cases typically are very difficult cases to win. Is the fix-in or is it just our imagination? Consider this case, the state legislature in Illinois passed a bill a while back. It was signed into law and said, "If you were a company that made liquor, any kind of liquor product, and you had a distributor in Illinois who was doing what a liquor distributor does, which is buying from you and then shipping to stores and bars and whoever, if you decided at some point you wanted to switch to a different distributor, some of you service was better or some of you weren't reliable," whatever. This all said that unless a special board ruled that you had a good reason to switch, and the reason is that it'd be really, really good, you were not allowed to switch. You're getting this? This is basically a law that stopped you from freely choosing who you wanted to do business with. And it was the main force behind the creation of this law. Cindy Canary, the head of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform will tell you the answer and before a warrant, it may sound suspicious. It was a man named Bill Wertz. And his job?
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