Author: Jarod Bona It isn’t easy to be an indirect purchaser antitrust class action plaintiff. Not only do you have to satisfy the difficult standards for class certification (discussed here), but you also have to prove that the direct purchasers passed on an overcharge from defendants’ alleged anticompetitive conduct. Before…
If you are the antitrust lawyer for a defendant in a class action, defeating class certification is a major victory—usually a complete victory, pending appeal. You can read a more complete description of the requirements for class certification in our article on the class action antitrust case of Comcast v.…
The US Supreme Court just issued its decision in an antitrust case called Ellen Gelboim v. Bank of America Corporation. This case arises out of major multi-district litigation (an MDL) centered on allegations that major banks conspired to manipulate the London InterBank Offered Rate (which you probably know as LIBOR)…
I’ve often written about real estate on this blog. There are two reasons for this. The first and most important reason is because my wife and I invest in real estate and thus talk about real estate, so it is on my mind. In fact, I have my California real-estate license.…
The defendants in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. failed to show the US Supreme Court the “special justification” necessary to overturn settled precedent. As we explained in a previous post, the Supreme Court in this case agreed to reconsider its 1988 decision in Basic v. Levinson, which allowed…
If you ask this question to an antitrust lawyer, you will receive some form of “it depends” in response. That’s true. It does depend. And you will inevitably follow up with, “What does it depend upon?” Let’s see if we can begin to answer that question. What we are discussing…
That’s right, the antitrust laws care so much about competition that they even prohibit agreements among competitors to not steal. In a society that morally condemns stealing, this is counter-intuitive (and a good reason to learn a little bit about antitrust). You might wonder now whether I will engage in…
While waiting for my flight to leave San Diego on my way to Washington, DC for the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting, I saw on Twitter—the best source for immediate Supreme Court news—that the Supreme Court had decided Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc. The Supreme Court in that…
On March 5, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the fraud-on-the-market presumption in securities class actions should survive. The case is Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund and it could be groundbreaking. If the Supreme Court jettisons the presumption, it will close a major avenue for securities class-action…