Legal Question in Business Law in New Jersey

Re: Being excluded from product launch is that legal

There is no guarantee of it, but you may have a case for violation of the anti-trust laws. Done correctly, you may also be able to get some inventory.

To preserve any claims that you have, it is important to document everything in connection with your attempts to purchase these items and ask your other dealer friends to do the same. After you get that underway, call a lawyer who handles business litigation. It would be nice to get one who does a lot of anti-trust litigation but the fees may be prohibitive for you. You would find such lawyers in big firms expecting big fees because most anti-trust litigation is about big money.

Keep in mind that most commercial practices have some anticompetitive effect but do not violate the law. There is nothing inherently improper about a large buyer taking up all the inventory. There is nothing that says that a manufacturer has to give every buyer the same deal or even any deal at all. The laws do prohibit practices that are intential and have a substantial anti-competitive effect. The "vertical restraints" that you describe are frequently entirely justifiable by business needs. The first question that you have to ask is whether the manufacturer derives any possible benefit from limiting sales to a few, large dealers. If not, then it probably would not be possible to show an anti-trust violation.

A second line of approach that would be much more practical is to have a lawyer follow up when you want to place an order and are turned down. I could help with that. If each declined order is followed up by a letter from your lawyer stating that the declination might later be treated as a refusal to deal, you might find out that some items magically become available for you. That course of action is also a good one if the matter winds up in court. Since the item is more or less a fad item, and you need the inventory now, those letters look like a good alternative.

Call me if you need help with this. The consultation will be free and there is more to discuss.

See also: http://info.corbettlaw.net/lawguru.htm