The District of Columbia attorney general's office on Thursday urged an appeals court to revive the city's lawsuit accusing Amazon.com of artificially driving up prices on its platform and elsewhere through curbs on third-party sellers and wholesalers.
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals heard arguments for an hour, as the city's highest local court weighed whether a judge in 2022 wrongly dismissed the attorney general's case.
The city's attorney argued that the D.C. Superior Court trial judge "ignored" factual allegations that provided enough of a basis to let the antitrust case move forward.
The District's lawsuit accused Amazon of anticompetitive agreements, including unlawfully barring merchants on the e-commerce giant's platform from offering lower prices elsewhere.
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D.C. Court of Appeals Judge John Fisher questioned the lawyer for the District, Caroline Van Zile, why the District's complaint against Amazon was not submitted with "more concrete facts."
"Could we have done that? Sure," Van Zile said. "Is it a requirement? Absolutely not."
Van Zile, the District's top appellate lawyer, told the court that the District was asking for "the opportunity to make our case. We think that we have the allegations sufficient to get us there."
Amazon has denied violating the District's law prohibiting business arrangements that curb competition.
A spokesperson for Amazon said the company had no comment. The D.C. attorney general's office also had no immediate comment.
Amazon is facing an array of private consumer lawsuits and U.S. or state government cases over its business practices.
A U.S. judge in Seattle in March allowed a private lawsuit alleging similar price-inflation allegations to move forward. In September, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon for alleged U.S. antitrust violations.
In the D.C. case, the lower court challenged the city's assertion that Amazon's prices were anticompetitive. "It is equally likely the prices are the result of lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior," Superior Court Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo wrote in an August 2022 order.
Attorney Kannon Shanmugam, arguing for Amazon on Thursday, said the District's lawsuit was lacking "meat on the bones," and that arguing antitrust violations in "theory" should not be enough to sustain a complaint.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce backed Amazon's arguments and urged the appeals court not to revive the District's lawsuit.
The Open Markets Institute and a group of antitrust law professors filed briefs supporting the District.
The appeals court panel deciding the case also includes Judges Corinne Beckwith and Joshua Deahl. Beckwith did not attend Thursday's hearing due to illness.
The case is District of Columbia v. Amazon.com Inc, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, No. 22-CV-657.
For D.C.: Brian Schwalb, Caroline Van Zile and Graham Phillips of the D.C. attorney general’s office
For Amazon: Kannon Shanmugam, Karen Dunn and William Isaacson of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
