Southern District of New York Judge William H. Pauley III approved a $12 million profit disgorgement antitrust settlement between KeySpan Corp. and the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ alleged that KeySpan kept electricity prices artificially high in New York City by obtaining a financial stake in one of its competitors. Its financial stake in [...]
Category Archives: Antitrust Division Action
DOJ to Investigate Google Book Deal
April 1, 2011 – 3:08 pm
Update March 2011: Southern District of NY Judge Denny Chin rejected a class action settlement between plaintiff publishers and Google that would have permitted Google to publish orphan works on an opt out basis. The Department of Justice and potential competitors such as Microsoft and Amazon argued that the settlement would allow Google to monopolize [...]
Antitrust Claims Dismissed Against Realtor Association
February 17, 2011 – 10:26 am
Southern District of Georgia Judge Randell Hall dismissed with prejudice a Real-estate broker’s suit alleging that the Greater Augusta Association of Realtors Inc. (GAAR) violated the Sherman Act by adopting rules that discriminated against agents who operated solely online. Separately, Keller alleged that the rules violated a consent judgment in an earlier case. There the [...]
DOJ Indicts Ex-Florida West Vice-President and Others for Price-Fixing in Air Transportation Industry
January 17, 2011 – 10:35 am
The Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, indicted Ex-Florida West Vice President Rodrigo Hernan Hidalgo, Luis Agusto Afanador, and Jaime Rueda Sr. in the Southern District of Flordia for conspiracy to restrain trade under the Sherman Act. The conspiracy operated in early 2002, allegedly fixing the prices of peak season fuel and security surcharges for cargo [...]
EU and DOJ Investigating an Alledged Refrigeration Cartel+Class Action Filed
October 17, 2010 – 4:58 pm
Update October 2010: Panasonic ($49.1 million) and Whirlpool (a subsidiary of Embraco North America) ($91.8 million) have agreed to pay criminal fines in the U.S. case. The investigation is on-going. Update March 2009: An appliance company has filed a putative class action on behalf of appliance sellers against Whirlpool, Tecumseh, and Panasonic, three compressor manufacturers that believed to [...]
Antitrust Division Sues Credit Card Companies
October 12, 2010 – 1:40 pm
The United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, along with several states’ attorneys general have sued Visa, MasterCard, and American Express alleging that the card systems’ rules prohibiting merchants from offering discounts to consumers who use a particular card brand constitute unreasonable vertical agreements in restraint of trade. The Division simultaneously filed a proposed consent [...]
Another Guilty Plea in DOJ Air Cargo Cartel Probe
October 1, 2010 – 11:25 am
Update October 2010: Six international freight forwarding companies have agreed to pay criminal fines in the U.S. case totaling $50.3 million. Update July 2010:Northwest Airlines, now part of Delta, has plead guilty and agreed to pay a $38 million fine and assist in the on-going investigation. Delta stressed that the illegal conduct occurred before it [...]
DOJ Signs Off on United-Continental Merger
August 31, 2010 – 3:06 pm
The Antitrust Division agreed not to challenge the United-Continental merger when the merging airlines agreed to lease 18 pairs of takeoff and landing slots at Newark Liberty International Airport to discount carrier Southwest Airlines. Aside from the concern about barrier to entry into Newark, which were alleviated by the leasing agreement, the Antitrust Division took [...]
Blood Reagent Price-Fixing MDL Moves Forward
August 27, 2010 – 4:03 pm
E.D. PA Judge Jan Dubois denied defendant Immucor Inc. & Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics Inc. motion to dismiss on the ground that the plaintiffs had failed to sufficiently allege an agreement. The judge cited the close timing of the defenants’ price increases for blood reagent; their cancellations of contracts with group purchasers; and [...]
New Merger Guidelines Released
August 19, 2010 – 3:30 pm
The United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, and the Federal Trade Commission have released new merger guidelines explaining how the enforcement agencies review horizontal mergers. The merger guidelines have existed in various forms since 1968. The last major revision was in the mid-1990s. The agencies announced last fall that they were planning to revise the [...]