The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. last week concluded that the government failed to prove that the combination of AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. would violate Sec. 7 of the Clayton Act. A decision of the federal district court in Washington, D.C. denying the Antitrust Division’s request to enjoin the deal has been affirmed….
United States v. Kemp & Associates and Daniel Mannix, Case No., 2:16-cr-403 (DS). JudgeSamPerSeMemorandum On August 17, 2016 the defendants in this case were indicted on one count of violating §1 of the Sherman Act by agreeing to allocate customers of heir location services sold in the United States. Utah District Court Judge David Sam initially…
It just got more difficult for states to recover attorney fees when challenging mergers jointly with the Federal Trade Commission. If an injunction is issued under Sec. 13(b) of the FTC Act to block the merger, then a state joining the FTC in a suit to block the merger is foreclosed from seeking attorney fees and…
I have written before about the fugitive disentitlement doctrine and a recent case about the fugitive disentitlement doctrine caught my attention. United States v. Contoguris, Case: 2:17-cr-00233-EAS (SD Ohio). It is not an antitrust case but does involve the interplay of the global reach of certain US criminal statutes and the fugitive disentitlement doctrine. The defendant is…
In a decision pondering the adequacy of the Sherman Act to protect consumers from consciously parallel conduct among oligopolists, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld dismissal of a class action against containerboard manufacturers for conspiring to increase prices and reduce output between 2004 and 2010. Although the complaining direct purchasers offered bountiful circumstantial…
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on November 26 in a suit alleging that the Ninth Circuit erred in holding that iPhone App Store customers were direct purchasers of those apps and had standing to sue Apple for the monopolization and attempted monopolization of the market for the sales of iPhone apps. The liberal justices…
In an earlier post I discussed the Fiscal Year 2018 Antitrust Division statistics for criminal cases filed and noted that they were down dramatically (here). This is not a one year drop off, but a trend since the high water mark of 2015 (here). It is not just case filings that are down, but also…
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats should continue their truth-out tradition when the Subcommittee on Antitrust holds an antitrust hearing October 3rd. Here are a few recommended questions: 1. Sprint/T-Mobile Merger. Even after the Department of Justice Antitrust Division rejected the proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile as harmful to consumers, Sprint and T-Mobile have proposed a…
I have been advocating for some time that antitrust cartel whistleblower legislation be passed. Whistleblower legislation has been phenomenally successful for the SEC and other agencies and there is no reason price fixing/bid rigging cartels shouldn’t face the threat of a whistleblower. Kimberly Justice and I wrote a short article: It’s a Crime There Isn’t an…
On August 20, 2018 the Antitrust Division announced in a press release (here) the return of an indictment (here) against a real estate company, a realtor and an accountant that does not include a charge of violating the Sherman Act. The press release states: [T]he Detloffs devised a scheme requiring repair contractors to pay the…
