Safeway Settles Monopoly Complaint

Avalon, Calif., Safeway has reached an agreement with the California attorney general’s office to vacate one of its two Vons supermarkets there to settle charges that it was monopolizing the town’s grocery business. Safeway had acquired a small independent in the town in 1991, giving the chain the only two supermarkets on Catalina Island. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said the settlement calls for the landlord of the property where the acquired store is located to seek a new tenant for the space. In the settlement, Vons denied any violations of the law.