December 12, 2018
You will keep your prices high or else!
Timothy Birdnow
A St. Louis gas station owner is being charged with pricing his gas too low - and it could wind up costing him $5.6 million dollars!
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
"A St. Louis jury awarded Westmoreland $1.8 million in October after he and his attorneys said that Midwest-St. Louis LLC had violated the law by pricing gas below cost.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Elizabeth Hogan ruled Nov. 30 that under the law, the jury’s award should be tripled. She also added in about $200,000 in attorney’s fees, for a total of $5.6 million.
Gogel cautioned that an appeal by Midwest was likely.
Westmoreland’s original suit, filed in St. Louis Circuit Court in 2015, says that Midwest, which does business as Gas Mart 6, began cutting prices at a station at 209 East Grand Avenue in 2012, ultimately driving Westmoreland’s Go West Mart gas station, at 6020 North Broadway, out of business.
Gogel said that the owners of Midwest had since bought Westmoreland’s old station.
End excerpt.
Funny; I thought we lived in a free market society. Didn't know we had to get permission to cut prices on things. America is now a Corporatist state, with an economic policy Mussolini or Hitler would find very comforting.
The Communists had a saying "first Brown then Red". America is clearly Brown as the Mississippi River.
A St. Louis gas station owner is being charged with pricing his gas too low - and it could wind up costing him $5.6 million dollars!
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
"A St. Louis jury awarded Westmoreland $1.8 million in October after he and his attorneys said that Midwest-St. Louis LLC had violated the law by pricing gas below cost.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Elizabeth Hogan ruled Nov. 30 that under the law, the jury’s award should be tripled. She also added in about $200,000 in attorney’s fees, for a total of $5.6 million.
Gogel cautioned that an appeal by Midwest was likely.
Westmoreland’s original suit, filed in St. Louis Circuit Court in 2015, says that Midwest, which does business as Gas Mart 6, began cutting prices at a station at 209 East Grand Avenue in 2012, ultimately driving Westmoreland’s Go West Mart gas station, at 6020 North Broadway, out of business.
Gogel said that the owners of Midwest had since bought Westmoreland’s old station.
End excerpt.
Funny; I thought we lived in a free market society. Didn't know we had to get permission to cut prices on things. America is now a Corporatist state, with an economic policy Mussolini or Hitler would find very comforting.
The Communists had a saying "first Brown then Red". America is clearly Brown as the Mississippi River.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
03:00 PM
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1
Passing strange! I have not to hand a map of the area, so the street names don't mean anything to me. But I can remember thirty years ago living in the Buffalo NY area, when there would be gas stations on three of the adjacent four corners of an intersection (can't remember just what might have been on the fourth corner, but it doesn't matter). One of the station owners would wake up one morning with a toothache or something, decide to start a price war, chop his prices a couple of cents, and the others on the block would be forced to follow suit. No, I shouldn't say "suit" because lawyers stayed out of the picture. The "price war" might continue for a week or ten days, with the prices dropping every few days, but somehow all the stations would manage to stay in business, and as in Communist days, "the shortages would be divided among the peasants." Eventually all stations would revert to normal prices, car owners would start complaining again, and local businesses would breathe a sigh of relief about the reversion to normal traffic patterns.
And the local lawyers would stay pissed-off because their services had not been needed.
And the local lawyers would stay pissed-off because their services had not been needed.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at December 12, 2018 10:42 PM (Grtv4)
2
Dana, I can tell you this about the story; the gas stations are in an all-black part of town and no doubt that entered into the judgment, what with the Black Lives Matter crowd forever stirring the pot here in "the 'Lou". If this had been a white owned station in a white part of town fighting with a chain nobody would have worried about this, I am fairly confident.
Competition helps everyone. I like local businesses, but if they can't compete they don't have a right to be in business. If gas stations can't cut prices in a price war then why should other businesses be able to do so? Wal-Mart drove the old Mom-and-pop stores out, and Home Depot did that to the family hardware store. And what of Amazon? What of Google, Twitter, Facebook? If these businesses can cut prices to grab the market why can't a small gas chain?
It always comes down to whose ox is being gored.
Competition helps everyone. I like local businesses, but if they can't compete they don't have a right to be in business. If gas stations can't cut prices in a price war then why should other businesses be able to do so? Wal-Mart drove the old Mom-and-pop stores out, and Home Depot did that to the family hardware store. And what of Amazon? What of Google, Twitter, Facebook? If these businesses can cut prices to grab the market why can't a small gas chain?
It always comes down to whose ox is being gored.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at December 13, 2018 08:02 AM (6uWuF)
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