151786P.pdf   03/01/2017  Millennium Operations, Inc.  v.  SuperValu, Inc.
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  15-1786
   U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - Minneapolis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Riley, Author, with Colloton and Kelly, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Antitrust. For the court's prior opinion in the matter 
   rejecting the argument that the antitrust plaintiffs are required to 
   arbitrate their claims against the wholesale grocer defendants based on 
   equitable estoppel, see In Re Wholesale Grocery Prods. Antitrust Litig., 
   707 F.3d 917 (8th Cir. 2013). The wholesalers now appeal the district 
   court's rejection of their two alternative theories - that the 
   nonsignatory defendants could compel arbitration because they were 
   successors-in-interest to the signatory defendants or that they could 
   directly enforce their previous arbitration agreements because some of the 
   conduct in question occurred when the previous agreements were still in 
   effect. Held, the district court correctly rejected the 
   successors-in-interest theory because the nonsignatory defendants are 
   predecessors-in-interest to their assignees, not successors-in-interest, 
   and there is no authority supporting the theory that a 
   predecessor-in-interest bears a sufficiently close relations to a 
   successor-in-interest such that the predecessor-in-interest can compel 
   arbitration under an agreement to which only the successor-in-interest is 
   a signatory; with respect to the wholesalers' direct enforcement argument, 
   the wholesalers may not directly enforce the arbitration agreements to 
   which they are no longer signatories. Judge Colloton, concurring in the 
   judgment in part, and dissenting in part.