Antitrust Complaint Filed With Department of Justice over St. Augustine Movie Theatre Demolition, $10 Tickets in $8 Million New EPIC Theatre Building

May 13, 2009
Honorable Christine A. Varney, Esquire
Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Robert F. Kennedy Justice Department Building, Room 3109
Washington, D.C. 20580 via fax to (202) 616-2645

RE: ANTITRUST LAW COMPLIANCE IN ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA -- EPIC THEATRES, REGAL THEATRES & HULL STOREY GIBSON COMPANIES LLC

Dear General Varney:

Congratulations to you for leading DOJ's renewed enforcement of our antitrust laws and for welcoming complaints, as you have announced in your speeches. How refreshing!

1. Accordingly, will you please investigate EPIC THEATRES, REGAL THEATRES and HULL STOREY GIBSON COMPANIES LLC for possible antitrust violations?

2. EPIC THEATRES recently opened a new 16-screen theatre here in St. Augustine, Florida, thereby affecting interstate commerce. (Five million tourists visit annually). 15 U.S.C. §§ 1,2.

3. At the same time, REGAL THEATRES publicly announced it is closing its five-screen theatre at the Ponce de León Mall. This is the only other first-run theatre here in St. Johns County (estimated population of +181,000), which has expanded in population some 50% since 2000..

4. At the same time, the owner of the Ponce de León Mall, HULL STOREY GIBSON COMPANIES LLC is publicly announcing it is demolishing the five-screen theatre in the Ponce de León Mall to afford a better view of another mall tenant (Belk's). This sounds like a transparent pretext, at best.

5. As a result of REGAL THEATRE's closing -- and HULL STOREY GIBSON's planned demolition -- of the five-screen theatre here, local movie ticket prices in our town and county have rapidly risen 25% -- from $8 to $10, at the only first-run theatre in town (and in the county), operated by EPIC THEATRES. Ticket prices in Jacksonville reportedly remain at $8.

6. In discussing the demolition, JOHN GIBSON of HULL STOREY GIBSON (headquartered in Augusta, Georgia) stated, "It will be raw land.... That will provide a better view of Belk's. No one is coming back to build a theater here again." Is this statement a reflection of an agreement? I have telephoned Mr. Gibson to ask about whether he would make available HSG's theatres to local community theatre and ballet groups. I will let you know what I might hear from him.

7. Will the Antitrust Division and please investigate? What agreements, understandings and relationships -- or conscious parallelism -- exist between and among EPIC THEATRES, REGAL THEATRES and HULL STOREY GIBSON COMPANY, LLC? What forces are simultaneously:
A. Increasing ticket prices?
B. Eliminating competition?
C. Eliminating even the theoretical possibility of new entry by demolishing a five-screen theatre, arrogantly stating "No one is coming back to build a theater here again?"
D. Eliminating locations for community theatres in a wonderful college town, where five million tourists visit annually and more are expected for our 450th anniversary in 2015?

8. These giant corporations' actions and planning – raising movie ticket prices 25%, destroying competition and bragging on it in a series of front-page corporate public relations "puff pieces" in our local newspaper – require an investigation pursuant to the antitrust laws. Instead of free and open competition between competing theatres, our town is being subjected to monopolization.

9. I respectfully request that the DOJ Antitrust Division kindly obtain an agreement by HULL STOREY GIBSON -- or else an injunction -- halting the threatened demolition of the five-screen movie theatres at the Ponce de León Mall pendente lite.

10. I request that a civil, criminal and administrative investigation be commenced at once. DOJ brought eight antitrust actions, 1938-1949, challenging movie studios' ownership of movie theatres. This concentrated sector of the economy deserves continuing scrutiny today, some sixty years later.

Thanking you in advance for your good work to protect consumers, I am,

With kindest regards,

Sincerely yours,



Ed Slavin
P.O. Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085
904-829-3877
904-471-9918 (fax)

Enclosures Three "puff pieces" from the St. Augustine Record, inter alia revealing EPIC THEATRES' $10 ticket prices, closing of REGAL THEATRES and HALL STOREY GIBSON's planned demolition plans of five-screen theatre formerly occupied by REGAL THEATRES