PUBLISHABLE OPINIONS

1) ANTITRUST: Delaware Valley Surgical Supply Co. v. Johnson & Johnson, 08-55105 (9th Cir. April 30, 2008). This case arose from a disagreement between different plaintiffs over which had standing as a "direct purchaser" to bring a claim under federal anti-trust laws. One group of plaintiffs consisted of Delaware Valley Surgical Supply Company ("DVSS") and Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center ("Niagara"); they bought medical supplies directly from Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries ("J&J"). Another plaintiff was Bamberg County Memorial Hospital & Nursing ("Bamberg"), a hospital that had a contract with J&J setting a list price for the purchase of medical supplies, but that ultimately purchased its J&J products through a separate contract with a third-party distributor. DVSS, Niagara, and Bamberg each brought independent antitrust claims against J&J. The district court consolidated the cases. Before reaching the merits of the underlying antitrust claims, it ruled that Bamberg lacked standing to assert its claim against J&J. The district court reasoned that because Bamberg bought its supply through a distributor and not from J&J, it was not a "direct purchaser." Bamberg and J&J both contested that decision through this interlocutory appeal. The USCA affirmed the order of the dis-trict court, agreeing that Bamberg lacked standing to pursue an antitrust claim under a direct purchaser theory. Goodwin, Pregerson, and D.W. Nelson (author), Circuit Judges. D. Schiffman of Chicago, IL, for the appellant; G. Nelson of Los Angeles, CA, for the ap-pellee. (Download the full text of this decision at www.ce9.uscourts.gov/)

2) SECURITIES: USA v. Stringer, 06-30100 (9th Cir. April 4, 2008). The United States appealed from a final order of the district court dismissing criminal indictments against three individual defendants charging counts of criminal securities violations. The dismissal was premised on the district court's conclusion that the government had engaged in deceitful conduct, in violation of the defendant's due process rights, by simultaneously pursuing civil and criminal investigations of the defendants' alleged falsification of the financial records of their high-tech camera sales company. Foreseeing the possibility of an appeal, the district court held that the indictment had to be dismissed, but ruled in the alternative that, should there be a criminal trial, all evidence provided by individual defendants in response to SEC subpoenas should be suppressed. The district court also suppressed evidence relating to the "Swedish Drop Shipment," an allegedly fraudulent accounting entry. It reasoned that the government had improperly interfered with, or intruded into, the attorney-client relationship of one of the defendants by accepting incriminating evidence about the entry from a defense attorney. The attorney had an apparent conflict of interest because she represented the corporation as well as an individual defendant. The USCA vacated the dismissal of the indictments because in a standard form it sent to the defendants,