Plaintiffs in a historic lawsuit alleging price-fixing in several Las Vegas casinos asked a federal appeals court to resurrect the case last week.
Former hotel guests filed a brief with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last Thursday (26 September), which argued multiple major casinos were violating federal antitrust laws by delegating their room pricing to a third-party software provider.
It comes four months after a judge sided with the casinos in the Nevada District, arguing that the plaintiffs were not able to demonstrate a tacit agreement between the businesses.
The complaint said: “[I]n reaching this result, the court drew inferences against Plaintiffs and ignored well-established caselaw. Indeed, the court’s reasoning would effectively immunise algorithmic price fixing from antitrust scrutiny and lead to a variety of absurd results.
“This case involves a modern version of an old story: one in which, rather than set prices independently, competitors delegate their pricing to a single third-party actor and break the competitive machinery of a normal market.”
Alleged Las Vegas strip price-fixing
Named defendants in the case include Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts, Treasure Island, Blackstone and the software supplier Cendyn Group, as well as its Rainmaker subsidiary.
The plaintiffs highlighted data that showed the defendants’ room prices have risen faster than a benchmark property on the strip since at least 2015.
This, they argued, was due to a conscious management strategy of driving profitability as opposed to occupancy rate.
The casinos have previously denied any wrongdoing in the matter, arguing in legal filings that there is no evidence of a conspiracy.
They said in a joint filing: “[T]he complaint fails at the outset because it is missing every essential ingredient necessary to plead an antitrust conspiracy under Ninth Circuit law.
“The complaint fails to identify any individual ‘who’ entered into the purported conspiracy. The complaint not only fails to allege “when” the purported conspiracy began, but it also concedes that plaintiffs have no idea when it began.”
The use of shared algorithmic room pricing technology has caused controversy in recent years, with a similar lawsuit filed in New Jersey against several major Atlantic City casinos.