Related Practice Areas:
Class Action
Commercial Litigation
Corporate Governance
Health Care
Investigations
Litigation
Litigation Support Group
Partners:
Brent R. Austin
Michael R. Blankshain
Douglas R. Carlson
John C. Church
Jerald P. Esrick
Beth L. Fancsali
Donald Flayton
John E. Frey
Carole E. Handler
Stephen J. Landes
Brian W. Lewis
Michael L. McCluggage
Paul T. Olszowka
Douglas L. Prochnow
Dominique R. Shelton
David M. Simon
R. John Street
Antitrust
Wildman Harrold has a well-established and sophisticated Antitrust Practice with a profound depth of current experience supported by a solid history of antitrust work going back nearly 40 years. Our strengths include representation of corporate clients in antitrust conspiracy litigation, ranging from individual and class cases brought in federal and state courts to complex, multi-districted lawsuits, and representation of clients in internal investigations and responses to criminal and civil proceedings instituted by enforcement authorities. We have deep and broad experience in addressing complex, substantive legal and economic issues posed by antitrust disputes and shaping effective presentations for our clients before judges and juries. Our antitrust lawyers have a keen appreciation of the expenses, risks, and internal disruptions often posed by antitrust issues. We strive to fashion solutions that take account of clients’ business needs while maximizing opportunities for successful resolution. Recent experience includes the following:
- We defended clients in a series of 14 related multi-party conspiracy class action cases brought under the Sherman Act and various state antitrust laws against dozens of insurance companies. We successfully briefed and argued federal insurance exemption and innovative applications of states’ antitrust exemptions. We creatively used industry, regulatory, and economic experts to defend class and merits issues. Five state courts and one U.S. district court were persuaded to dismiss federal and state antitrust claims. Working with the joint defense group, Wildman Harrold lawyers also played an active role in successful defenses of five motions to certify classes in these cases. In the wake of these defense victories, plaintiffs have abandoned several remaining state cases.
- Another of our clients faced civil and criminal antitrust liability after one of its competitor’s principals “confessed” to fixing prices and served time in jail; implicating only our client. We successfully defended the criminal investigation, in which neither the company nor any of its employees were charged in the criminal investigation. In the civil matters, we successfully attacked the plaintiffs’ case at a Daubert hearing to highlight the risk that the jury would not accept their regression evidence of a conspiracy. Our client—as the last defendant—settled at a fraction of what other competitors paid in cash settlements and met the settlement obligation with excess product.
- We are representing a long-time client of the firm in a nationwide class action brought by 50 plaintiffs’ firms under federal, antitrust, and RICO statutes. The litigation is an outgrowth of brokerage commission and bid-rigging investigations initiated by the New York Attorney General, some of which resulted in guilty pleas and civil settlements totaling almost $2 billion from co-defendants. This case has required massive discovery, involving more than 50 million pages from 50 different defendants and hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs, under a one-year court established deadline.
- We are also representing a leading pharmaceuticals manufacturer, and its generic drug company, in a series of antitrust cases, in both federal and state court, seeking billions of dollars for a variety of claims alleging manipulation and inflation of published prices for their products, violating the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and other similar state statutes, and several individual and class action antitrust allegations of unlawfully preventing entry into the market by other competitors.