Judge Denies Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Bid to Dismiss DRAM Antitrust Class Action

• Dispatched: Nov 15, 2026 · 00:38 ET (05:38 UTC)

One-sentence summary: Judge Noël Wise of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied a joint motion to dismiss on November 14, 2026 (ET), allowing a class action accusing Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology of conspiring to restrict conventional DRAM supply and inflate prices to proceed to discovery; the defendants must answer by December 7, 2026.

Verification status: ✓ Public ruling of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics, No. 5:26-cv-06345-NW); the order's contents were quoted in full by litnews.ai, and the November 13, 2026 hearing and docket developments were cross-checked by AIStockWire against the court docket; no coverage from Reuters or Bloomberg has been found so far.

Core Facts & Consensus Delta:

Seventeen consumers and small businesses filed the suit on June 25, 2026, alleging that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron coordinated cuts to conventional DRAM output from late 2022, shifted capacity to high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and wound down mainstream DDR4 lines between April and June 2025. The complaint asserts the three controlled more than 91% of global DRAM revenue as of the third quarter of 2025 and that conventional DRAM prices rose about 697% over 18 months — both figures are plaintiffs' allegations, not established facts.

The five defendant entities moved jointly to dismiss on September 2, 2026, arguing the case repeated DRAM II, dismissed and affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in March 2022. After a 27-minute hearing in San Jose on November 13, 2026, Judge Wise ruled on November 14 that the complaint plausibly alleges an agreement in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. She also sided with the defendants on several theories: the HBM pivot alone does not imply collusion, the DDR3 allegations fail, and public statements are insufficient.

Denial of a motion to dismiss is procedural only: the court must accept the complaint's allegations as true at this stage. No conspiracy has been proven and no liability has been found. The complaint seeks class certification, injunctive relief and treble damages; no damages figure has been publicly quantified.

Supply-Chain & Market Read-Through: The case tests the central narrative of the memory cycle: the manufacturers attribute the shortage to surging AI demand and HBM capacity absorption, while the plaintiffs allege coordinated supply restraint. Discovery may bring internal documents on capacity allocation, customer quotas and pricing into the open, giving the market a new variable for judging the shortage's cause.

A plaintiffs' win or settlement could, through treble damages and injunctive relief, constrain future capacity allocation — but the ruling changes no announced capacity plan today. For downstream buyers, the dispute over DRAM procurement costs now has judicial backing to proceed; Apple said on its November 3, 2026 call that memory pricing was "unprecedented" and would limit holiday-quarter supply of some products.

Next Catalysts & Watchpoints:

• December 7, 2026 (ET): deadline for the defendants to file their answers, the first formal response to each allegation.
• January 12, 2027, 09:00 ET / 14:00 UTC: initial case management conference, which will set the scope and schedule for discovery.

Sources:

• litnews.ai: Judge Refuses to Dismiss DRAM Supply Conspiracy Suit Against Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron (Published: November 14, 2026, ET; exact time not specified in the report)
• AIStockWire: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron (MU) DRAM lawsuit tracker (Updated: November 13, 2026, ET)
• CourtListener: Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. docket (No. 5:26-cv-06345-NW)

Information only, not investment advice.