CenterPoint Energy, Inc. v. Superior Court

Opinion

HUFFMAN, J.

This writ petition arises out of a number of coordinated antitrust actions by a group of independent plaintiffs, the Cities and Counties of San Francisco and Los Angeles et al. (plaintiffs), in which plaintiffs contend that numerous energy-related defendants engaged in a conspiracy from 1999 to 2002 to manipulate prices in the California retail natural gas market. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 16700 et seq., the Cartwright Act.) Plaintiffs are asserting that all the defendants falsely reported natural gas trades, manipulated price indices through churning activity, and engaged in…