Author: Luis Blanquez We’ve discussed the state action doctrine many times in the past. The courts have interpreted the federal antitrust laws as providing a limited exemption from the antitrust laws for certain state and local government conduct. This is known as state-action immunity. In this article, we will discuss…
Author: Steven Madoff Steven Madoff is a former Executive Vice President at Paramount Pictures and General Counsel for its Home Entertainment Subsidiary. He is Of Counsel at Bona Law. When you see someone acting strangely, do you ever wonder if they are possessed? If you do, it might be because…
Author: Jarod Bona Selling a product or service when there is little to no competition is a great way to get rich. An economist might call some of those profits “monopoly rents.” With less or no competition, the amount supplied usually diminishes and the price goes up. The purchasers in…
Author: Jarod Bona At Bona Law, nobody owns any ideas. If I come up with an argument for a brief, it isn’t the Jarod-Bona idea. If a client or a paralegal or a junior attorney or my son tells me that the strategy that I have set on a complex…
Author: Aaron Gott If you haven’t been told you need a strong antitrust compliance program, then you probably haven’t spent much time with an antitrust lawyer. But it’s true: a strong antitrust compliance program will benefit your company in myriad ways. The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division recently announced…
Author: Aaron Gott The federal antitrust laws are a decisive proclamation that competition is the best policy—competition leads to better products and services, the greatest value at the lowest price. But, just like with anything else, there are exceptions. Congress and the courts have carved out numerous exceptions from antitrust…
Author: Luke Hasskamp This is the second of a series of articles examining some of the interesting intersections between the law and baseball, with a focus on baseball’s exemption from federal and state antitrust laws. (Though, like the first article, this one does not quite reach the antitrust issues, as…
Author: Luke Hasskamp This is the first of a series of articles intended to address some of the interesting intersections between the law and baseball, particularly baseball’s curious exemption from federal and state antitrust laws. More generally, it’s about the struggle between team owners and players since the dawn of…
Author: Jarod Bona Thanks to a 1977 US Supreme Court case called Illinois Brick v. Illinois, class-action-antitrust plaintiff claims may look strange. You might expect to see named plaintiffs for a class of allegedly injured parties suing defendants (and it is usually multiple defendants) under the federal antitrust laws for…
Author: Jarod Bona It depends. But probably not. Outside of California, courts may enforce these non-compete agreements arising out of an employment contract. Of course, most courts, no matter what the law and state, view them skeptically. In California, however, the policy against these agreements is particularly strong. A restrictive…