Pit Row, Inc. v. Costco Wholesale Corporation, 101 F.4th 493

Twelve Green Bay, Wisconsin gas stations ("Green Bay Stations") sued Costco, alleging Costco sold gasoline below the minimum markup price in violation of Wisconsin’s Unfair Sales Act (Wis. Stat. § 100.30), seeking damages and an injunction.
Costco operates a members-only warehouse with a gas station in Bellevue, WI, and routinely matches its competitors' gasoline prices, including prices from the Kaukauna BP (24 miles away) and two local Marathon Stations with rewards discounts.
The dispute centers on whether Costco’s price-matching practices qualified under the statute’s “meeting competition” exception, and whether the Green Bay Stations suffered or were threatened with injury due to those practices.
The district court granted summary judgment for Costco, finding Costco mostly immune under the statutory exception and, on remaining dates, Green Bay Stations failed to prove actual/threatened injury caused by Costco.
On appeal, the Green Bay Stations challenged both the grant of summary judgment and a district court evidentiary ruling excluding a late expert report.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision on all issues.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Costco is a direct competitor of Kaukauna BP and Marathon for meeting-competition exception	Kaukauna BP too distant; Marathon’s lower price not generally advertised	Members from Kaukauna regularly buy at Costco; Marathon’s discounted price was available to all	Costco is a direct competitor to both; may match actual prices offered to buyers, not only advertised prices
Whether Costco satisfied the statutory notification and good faith requirements for exception	Challenged compliance due to alleged errors in notifications	Maintained business records and substantially complied; errors were inadvertent	Even inadvertent errors rebutted via business records; good faith established by daily monitoring, recordkeeping
Whether plaintiffs established actual or threatened injury caused by Costco’s pricing	Loss of profits and sales volume, supported by expert and lay testimony	Non-specific, speculative evidence does not show causation; no direct link to Costco’s pricing	Plaintiffs did not provide sufficient, non-speculative evidence of causation; summary judgment for Costco
Whether denial of motion to supplement expert report was an abuse of discretion	Needed to address district court’s exclusion of prior expert analysis	Would prejudice defense due to late timing; discovery was closed	No abuse of discretion; timely management of litigation upheld

A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (Supreme Court invalidated the NIRA, referenced for historical context)
Go America L.L.C. v. Kwik Trip, Inc., 715 N.W.2d 746 (Wis. Ct. App. 2006) (defined "direct competitor" under Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act and the meeting competition exception)
Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118 (Supreme Court clarifying standards for standing and causation)
Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (Supreme Court on standing and injury-in-fact)
West v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 311 U.S. 223 (Federal courts in diversity cases must apply state appellate, not trial, court interpretations)