Practicing Law With a Passion for the Rights of the Individual

Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. attorneys going after Sony, Toshiba, for price fixing
04/23/2010
PRESS RELEASE

TAMPA, Fla., April 23, 2010/PRESS RELEASE SITE/ - Los Angeles law firms Girardi & Keese, and Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. have filed a class action lawsuit against several companies, including subsidiaries of Sony, Samsung, Hitachi and Toshiba, for price fixing and bid rigging in the sale and distribution of optical disk drives or ODDs.

An optical disk drive is the drive used in a computer to read or record compact discs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. These drives serve as one of the main ways to record and read music, movies and other digital data. Nearly every computer that is used or sold in the United States today is equipped with an optical disk drive.

These disk drives generated billions of dollars for the companies that created them. The companies, in an attempt to increase profits, conspired to fix the price at which the products were sold in the United States, according to the suit. The companies artificially inflated the prices for the disk drives, and the increase was passed on to consumers.

These companies "formed an international cartel to illegally restrict competition in the ODD market, targeting and severely burdening indirect purchasers throughout the United States," according to the complaint.

"The bottom line is, consumers paid more for their computers than they would have if the competitive market determined the prices," said Casey Hatton, attorney with Wilkes & McHugh, P.A.

The suit applies to computers or optical disc drives purchased after November 1, 2005, and manufactured by:

  • Sony Optiarc, Inc.;
  • Sony Optiarc America, Inc.;
  • Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.;
  • Sony Corp.;
  • Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corp.;
  • Toshiba Corp.;
  • Samsung Electronics Co.;
  • Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc.;
  • Hitachi Ltd.; and
  • LG Electronics Inc.

These ODD products include CD-ROMS, CD-recordable/rewritable, DVD-ROM, DVD recordable/rewritable, Blu-ray, Blu-ray recordable/rewritable and HD-DVD used in both desktop and laptop computers. The lawsuit was filed April 21, 2010, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.