Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez As we explained in a prior post, the new draft merger Guidelines issued recently by the FTC and DOJ cite to several older court opinions that may be unfamiliar to antitrust practitioners who have been focused for decades exclusively on earlier versions of the…
Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez As we explained in a prior post, the new draft merger Guidelines issued recently by the FTC and DOJ cite to several older court opinions that might not be familiar to antitrust practitioners who have been focused for decades exclusively on earlier versions of…
Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez On July 19, 2023, the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division issued the draft of their long-anticipated Merger Guidelines. Like prior iterations, these Guidelines are meant to explain to potential merging parties how the agencies will evaluate their proposed transactions. Earlier versions included input from…
Author: Steven Cernak In the antitrust world in 2022, stories about Big Tech, government enforcement, and merger challenges dominated the headlines. But in putting together the 2023 edition of Antitrust in Distribution and Franchising (available for purchase soon!), I found a number of less-famous opinions that US distributors and their…
Author: Jarod Bona Like life, sometimes antitrust conspiracies are complicated. Not everything always fits into a neat little package. An articulate soundbite or an attractive infograph isn’t necessarily enough to explain the reality of what is going on. The paradigm example of an antitrust conspiracy is the smoke-filled room of…
Author: Jarod Bona Some antitrust questions are easy: Is naked price-fixing among competitors a Sherman Act violation? Yes, of course it is. Indeed, it is a per se antitrust violation. But there is one issue that is not only a common occurrence but also a source of great controversy among antitrust…
Author: Jarod Bona As an antitrust attorney, over time you see the same major cases cited again and again. It is only natural that you develop favorites. Here at The Antitrust Attorney Blog, we, from time-to-time, highlight some of the “Classic Antitrust Cases” that we love, that we hate, or…
Author: Jarod Bona When you think about Sherman Act Section 1 antitrust cases (the ones involving conspiracies), you usually consider the question—often framed at the motion to dismiss stage as a Twombly inquiry—whether the defendants actually engaged in an antitrust conspiracy. But, sometimes, the question is whether the defendants are, in…
Authors: Luke Hasskamp and Aaron Gott This article briefly explores the applicability of federal antitrust laws to actions taken by municipalities or other state subdivisions and, specifically, whether they have acted pursuant to a clearly articulated state policy to displace competition in the marketplace. Federal antitrust laws are designed to…
Author: Steven J. Cernak Recently, I was researching antitrust developments in 2020 to update my Antitrust in Distribution and Franchising book. While there were several developments last year, what struck me was the large number of potentially drastic changes to antitrust distribution law that started to play out in 2020…