1.To protect its state's businesses against ruinous price wars, a state legislature has passed a law permitting manufacturers to set a "suggested resale price" on all goods that they make and sell direct to retailers. Retailers are forbidden to undercut the resale price by more than 10 percent.
A retailer who violates the law may be sued by the manufacturer for treble damages: three times the di?erence between the suggested resale price and the actual selling price. But out-of-state retailers are bound by no such law and are regularly discounting the goods between 35 and 40 percent. As the general manager of a large discount store located within a few miles of a city across the state line, you wish to o?er the public a price of only 60 percent of the suggested retail price on items covered by the law in order to compete with the out-of-state retailers to which your customers have easy access. May you lower your price in order to compete? How would you defend yourself if sued by a manufacturer whose goods you discounted in violation of the law?
2.The DiForio Motor Car Company is a small manufacturer of automobiles and sells to three distributors in the city of Peoria. The largest distributor, Hugh's Auras, tells DiForio that it is losing money on its dealership and will quit selling the cars unless DiForio agrees to give it an exclusive contract. DiForio tells the other distributors, whose contracts were renewed from year to year, that it will no longer sell them cars at the end of the contract year. Smith Autos, one of the other dealers, protests, but DiForio refuses to resupply it. Smith Autos sues DiForio and Hugh's. What is the result? Why?