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Keller Postman serves as interim co-lead counsel in two class action lawsuits against Amazon.com—Frame Wilson, et al. v. Amazon.com and De Coster, et al. v. Amazon.com. These plaintiffs bring antitrust claims on behalf of two purported classes, alleging that they overpaid for products that they purchased online due to Amazon’s restrictive pricing policies. If certified, the Frame-Wilson class would make history as the largest class in the history of class action lawsuits.
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, with a market valuation of $1.5 trillion dollars—larger than Walmart, Target, SalesForce, IBM, eBay, and Etsy, combined. On its website, Amazon sells its own products, and hosts the sales of third-party sellers, from whom Amazon collects fees. In its lawsuits against Amazon, Keller Postman seeks to hold Amazon accountable for the increased prices that millions of consumers have had to pay as a result of Amazon’s restrictive pricing policies.
First, in Frame-Wilson, et al. v. Amazon.com, Keller Postman seeks to hold Amazon responsible for imposition of anticompetitive pricing policies that have resulted in consumers paying supracompetitive prices for retail goods purchased on other online sites for years. Amazon imposes many fees on its sellers that its competitors do not. As a result of these Amazon fees, sellers – if left free to choose – could list their products elsewhere at lower prices than on Amazon. However, Amazon also had pricing policies that required that every seller on Amazon to list its products on Amazon at a price no higher than it offers those products off-Amazon. As a result, sellers are coerced: they must either list their products off-Amazon at a supracompetitive price, or forgo all sales on Amazon (something that they can’t afford to do, given Amazon’s monopoly power). This class action seeks to rectify this injustice: the proposed class includes all persons who purchased, from a non-Amazon online retailer, a retail product that the person could have purchased on Amazon. In doing so, it seeks remuneration for those individuals who paid more off-Amazon than they otherwise should have paid, if sellers were left free to compete on price.
Next, in De Coster, et al. v. Amazon.com, Keller Postman represents a similar class of individuals, all of whom made retail purchases directly from, Amazon itself.
These individuals—like the plaintiffs in Frame-Wilson, made purchases at a supracompetitive price—a price that they would not have paid but for Amazon’s pricing policies.
Both lawsuits were filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, and have proceeded to discovery after Amazon thrice failed to dismiss them.
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Current status: Amazon made two attempts to dismiss Frame-Wilson entirely, and one attempt to dismiss De Coster entirely. It failed all three times. Both lawsuits have therefore proceeded to discovery.
March 24, 2023: Judge Jones rejects most of Amazon’s second motion to dismiss in Frame Wilson. He again decides that the plaintiffs had alleged facts sufficient to show that Amazon had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act under a rule of reason analysis, and that Amazon had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing, or attempting to monopolize, the U.S. retail ecommerce market.
January 24, 2023: Judge Ricardo Martinez of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington rejects most of Amazon’s motion to dismiss in De Coster. He decides (similar to Judge Jones in Frame-Wilson), that the plaintiffs had alleged facts sufficient to show an illegal agreement by Amazon under Section 1 of the Sherman Act under a rule of reason analysis, and that Amazon had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing, or attempting to monopolize, the U.S. retail ecommerce market.
August 8, 2022: Judge Richard A Jones rejects Amazon’s motion for reconsideration, noting that the motion had been mooted by the filing of a second amended complaint.
May 16, 2022: Amazon files a motion to dismiss the second amended complaint in Frame-Wilson.
April 11, 2022: The Frame-Wilson plaintiffs file a second amended complaint in the Western District of Washington. This is currently the operative complaint in the Frame-Wilson litigation.
March 25, 2022: Unhappy with Judge Jones’s order in Frame-Wilson, Amazon files a motion asking Judge Jones to reconsider his opinion.
March 11, 2022: Judge Richard A. Jones, of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, rejects most of Amazon’s motion to dismiss in Frame-Wilson. He decides that the Frame-Wilson plaintiffs had alleged facts sufficient to show that Amazon violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act under a rule of reason analysis, and that Amazon had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing, or attempting to monopolize, the U.S. retail e-commerce market.
September 20, 2021: Amazon files a motion to dismiss the amended complaint in De Coster.
July 21, 2021: The De Coster plaintiffs file an amended complaint in the Western District of Washington. This is currently the operative complaint in the De Coster litigation.
May 26, 2021: The De Coster plaintiffs file their original complaint in the Western District of Washington.
September 2, 2020: Amazon files a motion to dismiss the amended complaint in Frame-Wilson.
August 3, 2020: The Frame-Wilson plaintiffs file an amended complaint in the Western District of Washington.
March 19, 2020: The Frame-Wilson plaintiffs file their original complaint in the Western District of Washington.