California can’t get out of their way in being business unfriendly and it amazes me that big wine interest groups let them travel down this road so easily. We seem to be slowly turning back the clock from Granholm, where barriers to entry were destroyed, to an environment where barriers to entry are becoming commonplace […]
Takeaways
The Court took an absolute Commerce Clause position and relied on a U.S. Supreme Court case, which permits discrimination only when absolutely necessary.
The Court further dismissed the state’s claim that the 21st Amendment shields state discriminatory laws from Commerce Clause challenges. It held that the state misreads U.S. Supreme Court precedent […]
Recently, it was announced through a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) press release, that the FTC filed a petition in federal court to force Total Wine and More (Total) to produce documents related to the FTC’s investigation into Southern Wine and Spirits (Southern). The FTC order sought documents from Total “as part of its investigation into […]
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Anvar v. Dwyer (1st circuit decision) affirmed the district court in part, vacated it in part, and remanded for further proceedings.
Takeaways
The 1st Circuit vacated the district court’s decision in very strong terms. It rejected theoretical arguments about essential elements, health and safety, […]
Two recent decisions on wine retailer shipping cases out of Arizona ( Arizona Decision) and New Jersey (NJ Decision) federal courts show how judges are misunderstanding the issues and flat out getting it wrong.
In Arizona much of the decision was based on the judge’s conclusion that siding with the retailer would “require complete […]
On July 26, 2023 arguments took place in Anvar v. Dwyer, which challenged Rhode Island’s law, which only allows their in-state retailers to deliver wine to Rhode Island consumers, but denies this same privilege to out-of-state wine retailers. Along with this facially discriminatory law, there was a discriminatory in effect Commerce Clause challenge to the […]
Important factors
Before going into a summary of the legal decision, I wanted to provide some major points on why this decision, Block v. Canepa, is of paramount importance.
The first post Tennessee Wine decision on wine retailer shipping was Lebamoff v. Whitmer, where the Sixth Circuit found Michigan’s discriminatory wine retailer shipping […]
The Sixth Circuit reversed (Block v. Canepa) a decision from an Ohio Federal District Court upholding Ohio’s discriminatory wine retailer shipping law. The Sixth Circuit held that the case needs to be remanded back to the district court for further proceedings and that the District Court failed to consider the evidence provided by the […]
Not a surprise but there is corruption in the liquor field. We have seen it at government agencies in Oregon and Virginia and the Treasury Report on Competition recognized that despite active enforcement that there are exclusionary behaviors that include “discriminatory conduct by distributors.”[1]
The corruption in Virginia and Oregon pertained to how rare […]
WSWA’s solution that just doesn’t square
In its 2023 Membership Handbook, WSWA advocates against direct-to-consumer (DTC) shipping. It labels DTC shipping the biggest threat to the industry.
With WSWA worried that DTC shipping is such a big threat, it proudly lists its efforts crusading against DTC Shipping. One item on its list of Anti-DTC Advocacy […]