Total Wine & More sues Connecticut over minimum pricing rules Total Wine & More superstore says rules violate federal anti-trust law

A Maryland-based wine and beer superstore chain is challenging Connecticut’s liquor laws and regulation in federal court.

Total Wine & More filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut on Tuesday, claiming that the state’s minimum pricing laws for wine and spirits are anti-competitive, and violate the federal Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

The 35-year-old law prohibits wine and spirits from being sold at below cost, with just a few small exceptions. One such exception includes allowing retailers to sell one type of alcoholic item per month below the otherwise minimum price, but only up to a 10 percent discount.

Total Wine & More has four Connecticut locations: Milford, Norwalk, West Hartford and Manchester,

Ed Cooper, Total Wine & More’s vice president of public affairs and community relations, said the company had hoped the issue would be addressed by the Connecticut General Assembly over the last five sessions. But despite Gov. Dannel Malloy backing changes to Connecticut’s liquor regulations, lawmakers refused to end minimum pricing rules.

“This is on behalf of our customers who had enough of paying more than they should for wine and spirits,” Cooper said, speaking at the chain’s West Hartford store at the Corbins Corner Shopping Center. “We’ve been in this state for a number of years now and we are just exercising the rights provided to us under the Constitution. We want to put an end to this price fixing scheme.”

Cooper said Connecticut laws mean that consumers here pay as much as 25 percent more for spirits than their counterparts in neighboring states do.

But the Connecticut Package Stores Association has thus far been successful in convincing Connecticut lawmakers that the elimination of minimum pricing laws would allow larger national liquor store chains to crush smaller local stores, resulting in store closings and the loss of thousands of jobs.

“The rejection of the Total Wine position is a primary objection to one company attempting to eliminate stores and dominate the marketplace as a predatory competitor as it has in most other states where it operates,” Carroll Hughes, executive director of the Middletown-based package store trade group, said in a statement. “The legislature has already dealt with the minimum bottle issue. Action was taken to allow the sale of alcohol below minimum bottle price on items selected by package stores and registered with the Department of Liquor Control.”

Hughes contends that a change in the state’s liquor laws would result in the loss of substantial state revenue through sales tax and fees.

Cooper said Connecticut is the only state in the country where, by law, the wholesalers and retailers together set the minimum price consumers pay for wine and spirits. Total Wine & More was able to get a similar law overturned in Maryland.

Call Luther Turmelle at 203-680-9388.