Study Of The Plaintiff Eligibility For Civil Antitrust Litigation

The development of anti-monopoly civil litigation can make up for the implementation of the administrative agencies. Defined plaintiff eligibility is an important part of civil antitrust litigation. The litigation status of consumers, competitors, and social organizations is the main problem of. defined plaintiff eligibility in China. Referencing experiences and lessons from national anti-monopoly legislation and practice, and according to the provisions of Chinese anti-trust law, the following three factors should be considered to be the qualifications of antitrust civil plaintiff:(1)illegal monopolistic behavior; (2)occurrence of damage and this damage is foreseeable; (3)there are proximate cause relationships between the illegal monopolistic behavior and the damage. In the civil antitrust lawsuit of abuse of market dominant position, the practice of predatory pricing behavior of dominant companies do not cause harm to consumers, but immediately exclude competitors, so the competitors have plaintiff eligibility, the consumers are not proper plaintiff. Tying and binding behavior of operators cause damages to relative competitions, so the plaintiff should be given their qualifications. If the illegal behavior have led to high prices for consumers, they can claim this right. But if the purpose of tying and bundling is ruled out direct competitors, consumers have no loss, then consumers aren't the proper plaintiff at this time. With exploiting abuse of dominance perpetrators raise price, operators directly infringe the interests of consumers, so consumers have the plaintiff eligibility in such cases, competitors are not proper plaintiff. In the civil antitrust litigation involving monopoly agreements, if illegal horizontal agreements such as fixed price, fixed output and dividing of the market, cause increase of price reduce of yield and infringement of the interests of consumers, they should be qualified with the plaintiff. To protect interests of consumers, operators and the public interest, community organizations should be given plaintiff eligibility. China should establish a perfect institution of civil antitrust plaintiff eligibility to provide legal protection for the establishment of efficient, fair and competitive dynamic market economy.