Luxottica Will Settle Contact Lens Antitrust Class Action

Eyewear company Luxottica of America Inc. has reached a settlement with customers, extracting itself from a class action lawsuit alleging that 1-800 Contacts and other companies colluded to reduce competition in the contact lens market.

Four contact lens retailers remain in the 1-800 Contacts class action lawsuit. 1-800 Contacts settled out of the class action lawsuit in 2017. 

The amount of the Luxottica settlement has not been made public, nor have the terms.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission launched a complaint against 1-800 Contacts, saying that 1-800 Contacts violated antitrust laws by making agreements with other retailers to not bid against one another for online advertising opportunities presented by search engines.

This was reportedly done to limit the advertisements and contact lens shopping options presented to consumers who sought to shop for contacts online.

Following the Federal Trade Commission’s claims against the eyewear companies, consumers launched a class action lawsuit against them. They allege that consumers were financially injured by the companies’ conduct because they were not given a full range of choices for shopping.

According to the FTC, as many as 14 rival contacts lens companies were involved in the agreement, which effectively gave 1-800 Contacts an advantage.

The FTC says that 1-800 Contacts got its competitors to sign such an agreement against their own interests by threatening the companies with trademark infringement lawsuits, claiming that the other companies had violated copyright law because the names of the other companies showed up in Google searches for 1-800 Contacts.

Allegedly, customers were presented with only one option when they searched online for contacts — “to pay whatever the [companies] wanted to charge in a competition-free market.”

The customers seek damages for all people who purchased the contact lenses online in the United States. They also seek damages for a subclass of California residents who purchased contact lenses online.

In 2017, 1-800 Contacts asked for the antitrust class action lawsuit to be dismissed, a move which was denied in May 2018.

U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell said that the FTC’s complaint, filed in 2016, made it so that the claims had not been made more than four years after the alleged antitrust violations, as required by the Sherman Act.

Judge Campbell also said that 1-800 Contacts and the other eyewear companies had attempted to conceal their collusion in addition to allegedly committing it. 

Other eyewear companies involved in the contact lens collusion class action lawsuit include Walgreens and Vision Direct.

The customers are represented by Carl E. Goldfarb, Scott E. Gant and Melissa Felder Zappala of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and David W. Mitchell and Steven M. Jodlowski of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP.

The 1-800 Contacts Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit is Thompson, et al. v. 1-800 Contacts Inc., et al., Case No. 2:16-cv-01183, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah.

UPDATE: On Sept. 17, 2019, Walgreens and Vision Direct agreed to settle antitrust class action claims against them, leaving 1-800 Contacts as the only remaining defendant in the litigation.

UPDATE 2: July 2020, the 1-800 Contacts class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim.

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