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Competition
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July 24, 2024
DOJ Says NY Judge Muffed Standing In DirecTV Price-Fix Case
Paying inflated prices isn't the only way someone can be injured by price-fixing, and a New York federal court was wrong to rule that it was in a case brought by DirecTV over retransmission fees, the U.S. Department of Justice has told the Second Circuit.
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July 24, 2024
Packaging Co. Can't Limit Rival's Sales In NC Biz Spat
The North Carolina Business Court on Wednesday refused to limit the clientele of a packaging company facing sales-poaching claims by a competitor, reasoning that the rival's lawsuit isn't likely to succeed.
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July 24, 2024
Judge Sets Up 2-Tier Counsel Access In DOJ Live Nation Suit
A New York federal judge on Tuesday set up a two-tiered system for document access in the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster, limiting sensitive information from other market participants from Live Nation in-house counsel.
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July 24, 2024
Meme Stock Investor Opposes Robinhood Settlement For Now
A meme stock investor on Wednesday urged a Florida federal judge to deny a settlement between Robinhood and other traders who say they sustained losses when the exchange restricted trading of certain stocks during a social media fueled run, since he says he hasn't received any details on the deal.
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July 24, 2024
Ex-SAP Exec Settles Whistleblowing Retaliation Suit
A former executive of software giant SAP has settled his retaliation and age discrimination claims, according to a Wednesday order by a Pennsylvania federal court.
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July 24, 2024
Naval Engineers Urge 4th Circ. To Revive No-Poach Suit
A pair of former naval engineers have urged the Fourth Circuit to revive their proposed class action accusing military shipbuilding contractors and related firms of using secret "no-poach" agreements, saying their suit was wrongly ruled untimely amid a cover-up of the alleged scheme.
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July 24, 2024
IPhone Users Push For Apple Docs On Korea, EU App Stores
Plaintiffs in the ongoing App Store antitrust suit are accusing Apple of stonewalling their effort to obtain documents detailing procompetitive changes the company made to the online marketplace in South Korea and Europe, saying the tech giant won't turn over the information because it'd undermine Apple's core defense.
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July 24, 2024
Senate Dems Demand Scrutiny Of T-Mobile, UScellular Deal
T-Mobile's plan to buy the wireless operations of yet another mobile network operator — this time, United States Cellular Corp. — several years after it was allowed to merge with Sprint to become the third biggest carrier in the country is a bad idea, a handful of Democratic senators have told the U.S. Department of Justice and FCC.
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July 24, 2024
Pawnshop Co. Says Military Law Doesn't Back CFPB's Suit
National pawnshop company FirstCash says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should drop certain claims in a suit accusing it of subjecting military families to predatory lending, arguing that the bureau has admitted it has no authority to bring certain claims under the law undergirding the allegations.
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July 24, 2024
Aerospace Co. Says Engine Buybacks Aren't Anticompetitive
RTX Corp.'s subsidiary Pratt & Whitney urged a Pennsylvania federal court to toss a $450 million antitrust lawsuit from a "middleman" for used aircraft engine parts, arguing that Pratt & Whitney's decision to deal directly with numerous shops that break down old engines did not harm consumers or freeze the plaintiff out of the market.
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July 24, 2024
CFIUS Reviews Slumped In 2023, Penalties Increased
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States experienced a significant drop in the number of cases it reviewed in 2023, but levied a record number of penalties last year, according to an annual report to Congress.
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July 24, 2024
Last Holdouts Avoid Trial With Deal Over Chicken Price-Fixing
Chicken buyer plaintiffs say they've reached a settlement with Mountaire Farms and Koch Foods in their suit against the country's biggest broiler chicken producers for allegedly conspiring to raise prices, telling an Illinois federal judge to call off the trial that had been scheduled for September.
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July 23, 2024
Knives Out For Another Pro-Agency Landmark After Chevron
Only weeks after U.S. Supreme Court conservatives took a hatchet to the judicial deference shown to federal agencies, right-leaning lawyers are imploring the justices to rock the administrative law realm again by gutting a New Deal-era precedent at the heart of the modern regulatory system.
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July 23, 2024
Kroger And Colo. Talks To Avoid Merger Hearing Stall Out
Negotiations between Kroger Co. and Colorado enforcers to avoid an injunction hearing in the state's challenge to a $24 billion merger with Albertsons appeared to have stalled, prompting the grocers Tuesday to pitch a state judge on other options to avoid the fast-approaching proceeding.
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July 23, 2024
FTC Won't Delay Challenge To Handbag Merger Either
The Federal Trade Commission has declined to pause its administrative challenge to the $8.5 billion handbag merger between the owners of Coach and Michael Koors, saying that even a district court refusal to temporarily enjoin the merger might not end the FTC's in-house case.
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July 23, 2024
Nigeria Fines Meta $220M Over WhatsApp Privacy Policy
Nigerian regulators have hit Meta with a $220 million fine over alleged privacy and antitrust violations and ordered the company to stop sharing WhatsApp users' data with advertisers without express permission, the culmination of a nearly three-year-long investigative process.
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July 23, 2024
Microsoft Calls FTC Price Hike Claims 'Misleading' At 9th Circ
Microsoft pushed back against the Federal Trade Commission's contention that an increase in the company's gaming subscription pricing is evidence of the anticompetitive effects of the software giant's $68.7 billion acquisition of game developer Activision Blizzard Inc., calling the commission out for trying to "reinvent" its case against the merger on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
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July 23, 2024
US, UK, EU Antitrust Enforcers Outline AI Principles
The top antitrust officials from the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission and the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority presented a unified international commitment Tuesday to closely monitor artificial intelligence technology and the companies that they warned could wield AI anticompetitively.
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July 23, 2024
Chancery Ends Challenge To $12.5B Qualtrics' SAP Sale
Saying it was not reasonably conceivable that he would find software giant SAP and Qualtrics International Inc. directors liable for damages after Qualtrics' $12.5 billion sale to Silver Lake Capital despite a superficially better offer, a Delaware vice chancellor on Tuesday dismissed a stockholder challenge to the deal.
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July 23, 2024
FTC Attys On Kroger Case Get Extensions After IT Outage
The administrative law judge overseeing the Federal Trade Commission's in-house challenge to Kroger and Albertsons' $25 billion merger has given the agency and the grocery behemoths two extra days on a couple of filing deadlines after the FTC said the worldwide Microsoft outage left several counsel laptops unusable.
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July 23, 2024
Optum Can Arbitrate Calif. Healthcare Provider's Antitrust Suit
A California federal judge Tuesday ordered certain Emanate Health entities who signed hospital services and physician agreements with Optum to arbitrate their antitrust suit accusing it of monopolizing a primary care physician market, finding the agreements encompass rules that say issues of arbitrability will be referred to an arbitrator.
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July 23, 2024
Bros. Want New Trial For Concrete Price-Fixing Convictions
Two brothers convicted earlier this month of involvement in a ready-made concrete bid-rigging and price-fixing scheme asked a Georgia federal judge Monday for another shot at trial, arguing that repeated testimony about purported law-breaking tipped the scales in favor of federal prosecutors.
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July 23, 2024
Biz Groups Form Lobby Effort To Fight FCC Bulk Billing Rules
Bulk billing agreements are often a boon for people living in apartment buildings and condos, according to a new coalition made up of multifamily housing organizations and a cable trade group, which was formed to push the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider banning such arrangements.
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July 23, 2024
Capital One Card Holders Sue To Block Discover Merger
Capital One credit card holders launched a proposed class action seeking to block the company's $35 billion purchase of Discover Monday, claiming the acquisition will drive down competition and further consolidate the already-concentrated credit card market.
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July 23, 2024
On Capitol Hill, PBM Execs Deny Role In High Drug Costs
Executives from the nation's three largest pharmacy benefit managers told members of a U.S. House committee on Tuesday that they lower drug costs while pointing the finger at pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Expert Analysis
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What Recent Study Shows About AI's Promise For Legal Tasks
Amid both skepticism and excitement about the promise of generative artificial intelligence in legal contexts, the first randomized controlled trial studying its impact on basic lawyering tasks shows mixed but promising results, and underscores the need for attorneys to proactively engage with AI, says Daniel Schwarcz at University of Minnesota Law School.
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The Epic Antitrust Cases And Challenges Of Injunctive Relief
The Epic cases against Apple and Google offer a window into the courts' considerable challenges in Big Tech litigation and establishing injunctive relief that enhances competition and benefits consumers, say Kelly Lear Nordby and Jon Tomlin at Ankura Consulting.
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Decline In Same-Industry M&A Tells A Nuanced Policy Story
In light of newly available Hart-Scott-Rodino Act data suggesting that intraindustry mergers are down overall and pharmaceutical and hospital intraindustry transactions tend to face greater antitrust scrutiny than in the past, attorneys at Morgan Lewis explore whether Biden administration enforcement policies may be curbing pro-competitive strategic M&A.
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Behind The 'CVR Spin' Method Of Unlocking Assets In M&A
The spinoff of contingent value rights, or the CVR spin, can unlock secondary and noncore assets in public mergers and acquisitions, while resolving the market dislocation of some traditional divestitures, say attorneys at Gibson Dunn.
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Opinion
European Union Criticisms Of The FCPA Are Misguided
Some in the European Union have criticized U.S. enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for what they perceive as jurisdictional overreach, but this appears to overlook the crucial fact that jurisdiction is voluntary, and critics should focus instead on the lack of equivalent laws in their own region, say John Joy and YuTong Wang at FTI Law.
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5 Models For Structuring Health Provider-Payor Partnerships
With recent data showing that the U.S. continues to spend more and get less for healthcare services compared to other industrialized nations, providers and payors should consider a variety of partnership structures that can help achieve the so-called triple aim of improving the health of individuals and populations while reducing per capita costs, says John Howard at Thompson Coburn.
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Litigation Inspiration: A Source Of Untapped Fulfillment
As increasing numbers of attorneys struggle with stress and mental health issues, business litigators can find protection against burnout by remembering their important role in society — because fulfillment in one’s work isn’t just reserved for public interest lawyers, say Bennett Rawicki and Peter Bigelow at Hilgers Graben.
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Understanding Insurance Is Key To Limiting Antitrust Liability
As regulators signal their intent to continue last year's aggressive campaign of corporate antitrust litigation, businesses must make active management of their liability insurance policies, along with a firm knowledge of the limits of their coverage, central to their strategies for limiting the enormous financial risks of enforcement, say attorneys at Nossaman.
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What FTC's 'Killer Acquisition' Theory Means For Pharma Cos.
The Federal Trade Commission's recent lawsuit to block Sanofi's acquisition of a pharmaceutical treatment developed by Maze Therapeutics builds on previous enforcement actions and could indicate the agency's growing willingness to use its so-called killer acquisition theory against perceived attempts to eliminate nascent competition, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
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Series
Skiing Makes Me A Better Lawyer
A lifetime of skiing has helped me develop important professional skills, and taught me that embracing challenges with a spirit of adventure can allow lawyers to push boundaries, expand their capabilities and ultimately excel in their careers, says Andrea Przybysz at Tucker Ellis.
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Assessing Chinese Cross-Border Data Transfers
Jet Deng and Ken Dai at Dacheng unpack the regulatory framework for cross-border data transfers in China, detailing the major systems at play, last year's policy adjustments, and an outlook and practice tips for businesses.
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Think Like A Lawyer: Forget Everything You Know About IRAC
The mode of legal reasoning most students learn in law school, often called “Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion,” or IRAC, erroneously frames analysis as a separate, discrete step, resulting in disorganized briefs and untold obfuscation — but the fix is pretty simple, says Luke Andrews at Poole Huffman.
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Opinion
There Is No NCAA Supremacy Clause, Especially For NIL
A recent Tennessee federal court ruling illustrates the NCAA's problematic position that its member schools should violate state law rather than its rules — and the organization's legal history with the dormant commerce clause raises a fundamental constitutional issue that will have to be resolved before attorneys can navigate NIL with confidence, says Patrick O’Donnell at HWG.
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Complying With Enforcers' Ephemeral Messaging Guidance
Given federal antitrust enforcers’ recently issued guidance on ephemeral messaging applications, organizations must take a proactive approach to preserving short-lived communications — or risk criminal obstruction charges and civil discovery sanctions, say attorneys at Manatt.
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BT Case May Shape UK Class Action Landscape
The first opt-out collective action trial commenced in Le Patourel v. BT in the U.K. Competition Appeal Tribunal last month, regarding BT's abuse of dominance by overcharging millions of customers, will likely provide clarification on damages and funder returns in collective actions, which could significantly affect the class action regime, say lawyers at RPC.