# United States v. Von's Grocery (1966) **Argued:** March 22, 1966 · **Decided:** May 31, 1966 · **6–2, Justice Hugo Black** · 384 U.S. 270 The high-water mark of structural merger enforcement, and the case the [[Chicago School]] used to prove that structural merger enforcement had lost its mind. Von's was the third-largest grocery chain in Los Angeles with **4.7%** of the market; Shopping Bag was sixth with **4.2%**. Combined, about **7.5%** of a $2.5 billion market with dozens of competitors. The Court blocked the merger. ## The reasoning Black did not argue that 7.5% conferred market power. He argued that §7 as amended by the [[Celler-Kefauver Act]] was written to arrest a **trend**, and the trend in Los Angeles grocery was unmistakable: single-store owners had fallen from 5,365 in 1950 to 3,590 in 1963, while chains with two or more stores rose from 96 in 1953 to 150 in 1962. Congress, on this reading, had legislated against the direction of travel, not against any particular level of concentration. Justice Stewart, dissenting with Harlan, wrote the sentence that outlived the majority: > "The sole consistency that I can find is that in litigation under § 7, the Government always wins." ## Why it became the exhibit for the prosecution *Von's* is the case [[Robert Bork]] and [[Richard Posner]] pointed to when they argued that antitrust had become "a policy at war with itself." A rule that blocks a 7.5% merger in a fragmented market cannot be protecting consumers from anything; it can only be protecting small grocers from efficient competitors — and consumers pay for that protection in higher prices. *[[The Antitrust Paradox]]* treats it as the reductio. The critique won. Between *Von's* and the 1982 [[Merger Guidelines]] the government went from always winning to rarely suing, and merger analysis was rebuilt around price effects rather than trends in firm counts. ## The unresolved question What *Von's* actually saw — an entire category of independent local business disappearing over a decade, with no single merger responsible — is the thing the [[Consumer Welfare Standard]] has no instrument for measuring. Sixty years later the 2023 [[Merger Guidelines]] reintroduced **serial acquisitions** as a distinct theory of harm, on the reasoning that a roll-up executed one small deal at a time can produce a concentration no individual transaction would have triggered. That is Black's argument, restated with better economics. Whether it survives judicial review is one of the open questions of the current era. See [[US Antitrust and Monopoly Timeline]].