Antitrust Litigation

U.S. Merchants To Receive $1.1 Billion Payment In Landmark Visa/MasterCard Antitrust Litigation

Yesterday, Constantine Cannon LLP, Lead Counsel for the Class of U.S. merchants in the case captioned In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, announced that Class Members nationwide will be mailed checks this week totaling approximately $1.1 billion as part of a landmark antitrust settlement with Visa and MasterCard over practices related to their signature debit cards. This distribution represents the...

In A Twist, Patently Unenforceable Patent Gives Consumers Antitrust Claim

The Second Circuit’s recent decision in In re DDAVP Antitrust Litigation marks a significant development in the intersection of antitrust and patent law.  Consumers now have greater standing to assert antitrust claims involving unenforceable patents. The Court vacated and remanded a lower court’s dismissal of a purchaser’s antitrust claim against manufacturers for conspiring to keep generic versions of a...

Ninth Circuit Affirms Antitrust Verdict Against Tyco in Pulse Oximetry Market

The Ninth Circuit has upheld a jury verdict against Tyco (now known as Covidien) for anticompetitive sole source agreements and market share discounts.  Masimo Corp. v. Tyco Health Care Group, L.P., No. 07-55960, 2009 WL 3451725 (9th Cir. Oct. 28, 2009).  The appellate court affirmed the District Court’s post-trial decision, which struck part of the jury verdict but left a significant liability finding...

Sixth Circuit Cancels Flight For Plaintiffs In Airline Price-Fixing Case

Antitrust plaintiffs are continuing to find their antitrust flights are being grounded by federal courts’ application of the Supreme Court’s Twombly case. In Tam Travel, Inc., et al. v. Delta Airlines, Inc., et al. (In re Travel Agent Commission Antitrust Litigation), No. 07-4464 (6th Cir. Oct. 2, 2009), the Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal, by the Northern District of Ohio, of a complaint alleging that...

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,...

Justice Sotomayor's Pivotal Antitrust Decision

Though Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination hearings made lots of news, the media didn’t spend much time focusing on her antitrust decisions.  But the nation’s newest justice is no stranger to the Sherman Act. Constantine Cannon – as Lead Counsel in its groundbreaking debit card litigation – has first-hand experience with Justice Sotomayor's antitrust jurisprudence.  She authored a pivotal...

Independent Counsel Could Have Saved Banks Billions In Antitrust Litigation

Could banks have saved billions of dollars in antitrust settlements if they had turned to independent antitrust counsel before entrusting their fate to Visa and MasterCard?

In the Visa and MasterCard antitrust litigations of the past 12 years, it appeared that many banks did not rely on independent counsel to evaluate or sanction practices that raised serious antitrust issues.  Rather, the banks seemed to have...

The Long-Term View Could Have Saved The Banks From Many A Pitfall

When the history of the recent Global Financial Crisis is written, the short-term thinking that has infected financial markets is likely to be identified as one of the main culprits.  The current credit crisis underscores how essential it is for banks to consider the long-term economic consequences of their decisions.

As the law firm that spearheaded historic antitrust litigation against Visa and MasterCard’s...