Antitrust & Competition
Antitrust & Competition
TOP STORY—7th Cir.: Company that sold watches online was not granted Wisconsin ‘dealership’
The Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law did not protect the company from termination because there was not a substantial enough proportion of revenues or sufficient sunk costs to create a “community of interest.” The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has up...
The court also dismissed the company’s unfair trade practices allegations for failure to plead the required elements of the claims. A mortgage company failed to state a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) claim against an individual...
The defendant’s attorneys argued that jury instructions left each juror individually free to determine which predicate acts, among a “grab bag,” amounted to obstruction. In the FTC’s first ever wage fixing conspiracy case, defendant Neeraj Jindal, th...
The marketing company agreed to stop claiming that it provided specialized referrals to a wide selection of addictions treatment centers across the country. R360 LLC (R360) and its owner, Steven Doumar, have agreed to settle FTC claims that they fals...
After 32 years in the country, the company has had enough and is taking its golden arches with it. Fast food restaurant franchisor McDonald’s Corporation announced yesterday that it will exit the Russian market and has initiated a process to sell its...
Petition challenges Sixth Circuit’s conclusion that viewing of advertisement was not a transaction covered by state’s consumer protection law. A Michigan consumer alleging that he and over four billion other people were exposed to anti-Semitic messag...
Antitrust & Competition
TOP STORY—S.D. Fla.: Restraint of trade claim over January 2021 stock short squeeze fails
Investors failed to adequately allege that a brokerage and a market maker conspired to suppress stock prices; the alleged economic incentive was not sufficient to allow an inference that the defendants actually had an unlawful agreement to restrain t...
Summary judgment was proper because the wrongful act of obtaining Peloton’s advertising trade secrets at issue could not be attributed to the defendant and there was no evidence that the defendant actually used the trade secrets. Peloton was unable t...
No agency relationship existed between franchisee and franchisor, and the franchisor had no direct duty to the guest. A guest who was injured in a fall at a franchised Days Inn hotel and filed suit against the franchisor could not hold the franchisor...
The briefs argued that the FTC Act did not divest the district court of jurisdiction to hear Axon’s challenges to the FTC’s structure and procedures, and that the Ninth Circuit’s decision that the FTC Act “repealed” that jurisdiction was not supporte...
One commissioner voted against publishing the proposed rule changes, opining they were overly prescriptive and, among other problems, went too far in requiring specific formats for labels. The FTC is requesting public comments on possible changes to ...
TR Daily Groups say companies’ use of personal data harms minorities. Access Now, Free Press, and UltraViolet have delivered thousands of petition signatures urging the Federal Trade Commission to launch a privacy and civil rights rulemaking, and the...
Antitrust & Competition
The court certified settlement classes of direct purchaser and indirect reseller plaintiffs and preliminarily approved settlement agreements in this long-running price-fixing class action. The federal district court in Philadelphia has preliminary ap...
ALJ, trial judge each applied erroneous legal standards to support their conclusions that two huge displays the company had erected on a building within a redevelopment project area were not exempted from the OAA under subsections pertaining to displ...
With claims sufficiently pleaded, the court delayed the question of whether the employee could prove her allegations. The federal district court in Chicago denied a motion to dismiss by a Subway franchisor and the creator of its point-of-sale (POS) s...
The court determined that the employee and her attacker were employed by a franchise and not by KFC Corporation. The federal district court in Chicago has dismissed negligence and intentional tort claims by an employee raped by her manager at their p...
A complaint must allege a pattern of racketeering behavior over a substantial period time to sustain a federal RICO claim. The federal district court in Dallas, Texas dismissed without prejudice the RICO and state law claims of D&T Partners (D&T) aga...
TR Daily The bill proposes a new federal agency that would oversee and regulate Big Tech platforms to promote fair competition and protect consumers. Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.) yesterday introduced a bill to create a federal commission to overse...
A periodic roundup of other items of interest to the Antitrust and Trade Regulation community. ANTITRUST NEWS: In a speech at the Pinsent Masons annual competition conference, Executive Director of enforcement at the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Au...
Antitrust & Competition
TOP STORY—6th Cir.: Intervention properly denied in auto parts price fixing class action
The movant’s request for intervention one and a half years after learning that the parties would not protect its interests was untimely. In a billion-dollar multidistrict litigation against automotive-part manufacturers for fixing prices, a motion to...
Consumer’s claims expressly preempted by the FDC Act which permitted protein content statements to be based on either the nitrogen factor method or the protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS). A federal district court in California ...
The court agreed that the proposed $5.73 million settlement of claims that Sonic negligently allowed a customer data hack was fair and reasonable. The federal district court in Cleveland, Ohio has granted preliminary approval to a proposed settlement...
Friend-of-the-court brief submitted by Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division backs Special Master’s conclusion that allowing plaintiff who’d filed the underlying merger challenge to vertically integrate by buying those divestiture assets would n...
Once a partner of the online search giant and Android owner, the dating app company is now Google’s “hostage.” In a lawsuit filed in the federal district court in San Francisco, Match Group, the provider and operator of the world’s most popular datin...
The government contends that the recent DaVita acquittals do not support dismissal of the instant matter. The Department of Justice Antitrust Division has argued that recent acquittals in a criminal prosecution of kidney dialysis provider DaVita Inc....
The week’s most insightful, intriguing, or entertaining blog posts regarding antitrust and trade regulation issues. SSRN Paper Blog, Discriminatory Antitrust in the Realm of Potential and Nascent Competition , by John M. Yun (George Mason University)...
Antitrust & Competition
TOP STORY: Senate confirms Biden’s FTC nominee Alvaro Bedoya
Bedoya, a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law School and the founding director of its Center on Privacy & Technology, will fill the agency’s fifth seat breaking a two-two tie along party lines. The U.S. Senate voted 51-50 along party line...
Law firms globally are increasingly embracing profitability metrics as part of their long-term strategies and daily operations. Still, embarking on this journey often meets with stakeholder resistance and raises a host of delicate issues, as well as ...
The court held that Target’s terms and conditions intended to delegate arbitrability to the arbitrator. The federal district court in Los Angeles granted a motion to compel arbitration in a class action suit alleging Target Corporation’s free gift ca...
Indirect purchasers again allowed to rely upon Alaska's state consumer protection statute to assert claims otherwise barred by Alaska's state antitrust statute. A federal district court in Philadelphia denied in its entirety the joint motion by defen...
The therapeutic mattress manufacturer was enjoined using any distributor other than the plaintiff to sell certain of its products in Canada. Permobil Ltd., the exclusive distributor throughout Canada of certain therapeutic mattresses manufactured by ...
Medtronic’s divesture of Fiagon Medical Technologies would eliminate an impending competitive threat. Under a consent agreement pending approval by the FTC, Medtronic, Inc., will divest a subsidiary of Intersect ENT, Inc., as part of Medtronic’s prop...