Antitrust Litigation

Can The NBA Force A Sale Of Sterling's Clippers Without Running Afoul Of The Antitrust Laws?

By Jeffery I. Shinder and David Scupp

We applaud the NBA for the firm stance it took against racism, which we believe should have no place in our country.  Having said that, we note that some have suggested that Donald Sterling may file an antitrust lawsuit to maintain his grip on the Clippers, or to gain some leverage to get full value for the team in a forced sale.  Notwithstanding our views on his conduct, we...

Tech Heavyweights Settle Wage-Fixing Fight For $324 Million

By David Golden Google, Apple, Adobe Systems, and Intel have settled an antitrust class action lawsuit brought by software engineers in the high tech industry for a reported $324 million. The lawsuit, In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, alleged that the four companies (along with Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm) agreed to refrain from “poaching” each other’s employees, a common practice in...

Sixth Circuit Pulls Plug on Merging Hospital’s Weakened Firm Defense

By Marlene Koury The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has upheld a Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) order unwinding a merger of two Ohio hospitals that unsuccessfully sought to breathe life into a “weakened firm defense.” In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit denied ProMedica’s petition to overturn a Federal Trade Commission ruling, which ordered ProMedica to...

Barclays Settles Second LIBOR Mis-Selling Case

A View from Constantine Cannon’s London Office By Natalia Mikolajczyk Barclays confirmed on Friday that it has settled another case alleging that it mis-sold LIBOR-tied derivative products. The lawsuit was filed by Domingos Da Silva Teixeira (DST), a family-owned construction and property company based in Braga, Portugal. As reported by the Financial Times, DST alleged that the British bank engaged in...

Credit Card Issuers Defeat Claims They Conspired To Use Arbitration to Block Class Actions

By Owen Glist American Express, Chase, and Discover have prevailed in a bench trial of a class action charging that the nation’s largest credit card issuers illegally agreed to prevent cardholders from using class actions to sue them. While Judge William H. Pauley III of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the defendants on Thursday, he also indicated the...

Barclays Settles First LIBOR “Test Case”

A View from Constantine Cannon’s London Office By Michael Petrides Barclays announced on Monday that it has reached an out of court settlement of British LIBOR-related litigation with Graiseley Properties, owner of Guardian Care Homes (GCH). The case concerned two interest rate swap contracts entered into by Graiseley and Barclays. Graiseley suffered substantial losses when base LIBOR rates fell. ...

Libor Antitrust Plaintiffs Strike Out Again

By Jean Kim The antitrust claims of yet another putative class of Libor plaintiffs have been dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Finding that the plaintiff failed to adequately plead antitrust standing, Judge George Daniels dismissed the antitrust claims in Laydon v. Mizuho Bank, Ltd., a class action that alleges more than 20 banks manipulated the Euroyen Tokyo Interbank...

NLRB Rocks Student-Athlete Cases With Ruling That College Athletes Are Employees Entitled To Unionize

By Gordon Schnell and David Scupp On Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board issued a stunning decision finding that Northwestern University scholarship football players are employees of the school and therefore entitled to unionize. The NLRB’s holding could have a profound impact on the various antitrust suits that current and former players have brought against the NCAA, challenging its restrictions on...

Former West Virginia Running Back Seeks To Block “Fixed” NCAA Scholarships

By David Scupp Shawne Alston, a former running back at West Virginia University, has filed an antitrust class action alleging the fixing of scholarship amounts by the NCAA and its five football “Power Conferences” – the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC conferences. Alston claims that the NCAA and these Power Conferences conspired to fix the amounts of athletic scholarships, formally known as the...

Show Me The Money Or Go Home: Federal Courts Wrestle With Addressing Reverse-Payment Settlements After Supreme Court’s Actavis Decision

By Ankur Kapoor and Rosa M. Morales Nearly a year after the Supreme Court held in FTC v. Actavis that reverse-payment settlement agreements between branded and generic pharmaceutical companies are subject to antitrust scrutiny under the rule of reason, federal district courts are struggling with the thorny issue of whether plaintiffs need to show them the money. More specifically, district courts remain...