Antitrust Today

Pressure Builds For Legislative Repeal Of Supreme Court Decisions That Raised Pleading Standards

The United States Supreme Court in the last two years has given defendants in federal civil cases two key victories.  Now, a powerful Senator has joined with plaintiffs’ groups in introducing a bill to repeal those decisions. The two decisions – 2007’s Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, and this year’s Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937 – concern the level of detail that a plaintiff must...

It’s First Down For The NFL In The Supreme Court

Sports leagues and other joint ventures may score an antitrust victory in the Supreme Court this term that makes the Baseball Antitrust Exemption look strictly minor league. The Supreme Court will hear the case of American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League, which concerns the NFL’s practice of licensing NFL and team logos and other intellectual property exclusively through the NFL’s wholly-owned...

European Union On Verge Of Swinging Class Action Hammer

While the antitrust class action is historically an American enforcement tool, the European Union is on the verge of pressing this powerful hammer into the hands of its member states. Under a draft EU Directive, state bodies and nonprofit organizations appointed by national governments would be able to bring class actions in national courts against companies that fix prices or abuse their dominant market share. ...

Constantine Cannon Legal Victory Helps Client Achieve Outstanding Quarterly Profits

Discover Financial Services more than tripled its profits in the third fiscal quarter 2009, due in part to the antitrust settlement that Constantine Cannon and co-counsel secured last year. According to Discover’s quarterly financial statement, the company’s profits included approximately $287 million (after tax) in settlement payments relating to this lawsuit. In October 2008, Discover recovered $2.75 billion...

Canadian Class Actions Take A Step Forward

Canadian competition law litigation took a step forward last week with the decision in Irving Paper Ltd v. Atofina Chemicals Inc. et al., in which the Ontario Superior Court certified a consolidated class of direct and indirect purchasers in a horizontal price-fixing case involving the hydrogen peroxide industry.  The case has important precedential value as it represents the first time in Canada that an antitrust...

Constantine Pens A Timely And “Priceless” Tale Of Battling The Financial Giants

Constantine Cannon’s founding partner, Lloyd Constantine, has written a book that answers the timely question of how do you rescue an industry from the greed and anticompetitive conduct of financial giants?  Constantine’s answer was to lead an historic legal battle against Visa and Mastercard that led to those financial giants paying billions of dollars to America’s merchants. Constantine’s book,...

European Commission Publicizes Intel Emails In New Tack

Don’t put anything in an email that you wouldn’t want on the front page of the newspaper.  Or in a decision of the European Commission slapping a 1.06 billion Euros fine (approximately $1.5 billion) on your company.

On September 21, 2009, the Commission released a public version of its May 13 decision in which it imposed the record fine on Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer, for...

Review Of 1992 Merger Guidelines Is A Once-In-A-Generation Opportunity

Antitrust practitioners that pass on the upcoming opportunity to comment on revising the 1992 Merger Guidelines will be missing an opportunity that comes once in a generation. For 17 years now, the Horizontal Merger Guidelines jointly developed by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have been one of a few doctrinal pillars of the faith among antitrust practitioners, most notably with respect...

Will The Microsoft-Yahoo Partnership Result In U.S. v. Microsoft Redux?

Antitrust enforcers may be seeing a lot of their old friends at Microsoft thanks to the Internet search deal the computer giant has reached with Yahoo!  As Constantine Cannon’s Matt Cantor discusses in his recent article, "Microsoft-Yahoo! 'Partnership' Is Anti-Competitive", the deal raises substantial antitrust issues that may doom it. It appears that Microsoft and Yahoo!'s proposed "partnership," which...

For Antitrust Enforcers, Causation Can Be The Matrix

“You see there is only one constant.  One universal.  It is the only real truth.  Causality.  Action, reaction.  Cause and effect.” -- The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded Characters in science fiction films such as The Matrix series and The Time Traveler’s Wife have struggled with life-or-death issues of causation.  As highlighted by recent decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District...