Case Citator › Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe MacHinery Corp.

Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe MacHinery Corp.

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
392 U.S. 481
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
80 of 80
Citing cases (total)
921
Treatment dates
1980–1982
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe Machinery Corp. has been limited: all 80 flagged citations have been read, with 2 confirmed treatments listed below. A federal district court declined to extend the passing-on framework beyond overcharges in a single distribution chain, and the First Circuit questioned the continuing force of Hanover Shoe's civil-retroactivity “sharp break” threshold.
More on how this was screened

The Supreme Court of Arizona separately declined to import the federal indirect-purchaser constraint into Arizona antitrust law. The other opinions applied Hanover Shoe's no-passing-on rule, discussed its relationship with Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, or placed nearby adverse language on unrelated retroactivity precedents. Duplicate reporter clusters for Simpson v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs were read but produce one entry.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

921 later cases cite Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe MacHinery Corp.; 80 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe MacHinery Corp.?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The district court declined to extend Hanover Shoe's passing-on rule beyond illegal overcharges in a single distribution chain to undercharging competitors using parallel distribution networks.

    Zenith Radio Corp. v. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. · E.D. Pa. · filed

    Both Hanover Shoe and Illinois Brick arose in the context of a seller-purchaser relationship within a single chain of distribution, with allegations of an illegal overcharge. Thus, in that context, the Supreme Court has proscribed the use of the passing-on theory, both defensively and offensively. We are asked by defendants in the ease at bar to read these cases broadly and apply their rule to preclude a manufacturer who sells his product through a wholesaler from recovering antitrust damages from an undercharging competitor who sells through a parallel distribution network, on the grounds that it is the wholesaler, and not the manufacturer, who is directly injured by defendants' undercharge. This we will decline to do, holding instead that the rule of Illinois Brick does not apply to this litigation.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Questioned

  • The First Circuit questioned whether Hanover Shoe's suggested threshold requirement of a sufficiently sharp break before considering civil nonretroactivity still existed, and treated the degree of legal change as one factor instead.

    Simpson v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs · First Circuit · filed

    It has frequently been said that an issue of retroactivity "is not even presented" unless a decision satisfies a threshold condition of novelty. This condition has usually been termed a "sharp break" requirement. See, e.g., Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., 392 U.S. 481, 499, 88 S.Ct. 2224, 2234, 20 L.Ed.2d 1231 (1968). See also United States v. Peltier, 422 U.S. 531, 544 & n.1, 95 S.Ct. 2313, 2321 & n.1, 45 L.Ed.2d 374 (1974) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (suggesting that the condition has been abandoned); Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371, 381 n.2, 92 S.Ct. 2174, 2180 n.2, 33 L.Ed.2d 1 (1972) (Stewart, J., dissenting). We see no advantage in attempting to specify where on the continuum of sharpness that threshold might be, if it still exists. Instead we consider the manner in which Calbeck changed the law as one of several factors bearing on the justification for reliance on the Rohde -3(a) syllogism
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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