§4.11 IV. Unjust Enrichment

• Jurisdiction: New York

IV. UNJUST ENRICHMENT

Private plaintiffs seeking to recover for violations grounded in antitrust have also brought claims under a common law theory of unjust enrichment. In Sperry v. Crompton, the Court of Appeals held as a matter of law that a plaintiff need not be in privity with the defendant to state an unjust enrichment claim, but nonetheless found, without elaboration, that under the facts of that case the plaintiff’s connection to the defendants was “too attenuated” to support an unjust enrichment claim.⁴³⁷

As discussed above, Sperry was a purported class action brought on behalf of consumers who had purchased rubber tires that were manufactured using small amounts of rubber-processing chemicals produced and sold by the defendants. Plaintiffs alleged that the defendants conspired to raise the price of their rubber-processing chemicals, thereby “overcharging tire manufacturers for the chemicals, and that the overcharges trickled down the distribution chain to consumers.”⁴³⁸ While the Sperry court held that an indirect purchaser plaintiff does not have to be...