STAND. COM. REP. NO. 139

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    S.B. No. 1231

       S.D. 1

 

 

 

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2011

State of Hawaii

 

Sir:

 

     Your Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection, to which was referred S.B. No. 1231 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CHAPTER 480, HAWAII REVISED STATUTES,"

 

begs leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to enable the Department of the Attorney General to enforce federal anti-trust laws through private action regardless of a governmental entity's status as an indirect purchaser.

 

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of the Attorney General.

 

     Your Committee finds that, under federal law, the main enforcement mechanism for federal anti-trust statutes is the right of private action for recovery on behalf of an injured person.  In the case of a government entity that has been subject to an anti-trust violation in government purchasing, the injury ultimately devolves to the taxpayers.  Your Committee further finds that judicial precedent has prevented other government entities from succeeding in anti-trust actions prosecuted on behalf of the public where the State is an indirect purchaser of goods or services subject to price fixing or other prohibited conduct.  In these cases, unless applicable state law expressly grants the government entity the right to pursue an anti-trust lawsuit as an indirect purchaser, courts have barred recovery for the entity, and by extension the taxpayers.  Your Committee also finds that this measure remedies a current deficiency in Hawaii law that prevents government entities from pursuing all available remedies for anti-trust violations.

 

     Your Committee has amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

 

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1231, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1231, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Labor.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection,

 

 

 

____________________________

ROSALYN H. BAKER, Chair