Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, WORTH NOTING—Other Antitrust and Trade Regulation developments, (Mar 28, 2025)

By WK Editorial Staff

A periodic roundup of other items of interest to the Antitrust and Trade Regulation community.

ANTITRUST NEWS: Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced the introduction of the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act and the Stop Significant and Time-wasting Abuse Limiting Legitimate Innovation of New Generics (Stop STALLING) Act, two bipartisan bills to reduce drug prices by promoting competition and taking on Big Pharma’s abuses of deals with competitors and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) petitions. Both bills were passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023. The Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act would limit anticompetitive “pay-for-delay” deals that prevent or delay the introduction of affordable generic drugs that are, on average, 80 percent cheaper than their branded counterparts. The Stop Significant and Time-wasting Abuse Limiting Legitimate Innovation of New Generics (Stop STALLING) Act would deter branded pharmaceutical companies from filing sham “citizen petitions” with the FDA in order to interfere with the approval of generic and biosimilar medicines that compete with their own brand products.

ANTITRUST—E.D. Mich.: A motion to intervene and compel arbitration filed by Felix Brizuela, D.O. and a motion to intervene filed by Neil Anand, M.D. in the action brought by Ford Motor Company against Defendants Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Mutual Insurance Company (“BCBSM”) and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (“BCBSA”) (collectively “BCBS”) claiming violations of the Sherman Act were denied. Ford alleges that BCBS, as part of a larger conspiracy, has divided territory and fixed prices, while reducing competition and increasing the cost of health services, resulting in Ford being overcharged for commercial health insurance products. Here, a federal statute does not confer a right upon Dr. Brizuela or Dr. Anand to intervene, and they do not have an interest relating to property or a transaction that is the subject of this action, the court said. Nor did they demonstrate that they have “a substantial legal interest in the case” or that any of their interests would be impeded by this action. Their connection to the subject of the lawsuit was wholly unclear, except that they also believed BCBSA, or a BCBSA entity, has engaged in some type of wrongdoing which has harmed them, the court said (Ford Motor Co. v. Blue Cross Blue Shield Of Michigan Mutual Insurance Co., No. 2:23-cv-11286-LVP-EAS (E.D. Mich. Mar. 19, 2025)).

ANTITRUST—D. Del.: The federal district court in Wilmington, Delaware deferred ruling on if an expert opinion would be admissible at trial with respect to the reasonableness of Handa Pharmaceuticals LLC's subjective beliefs until it determines whether Handa will be permitted to adduce evidence at trial about those beliefs. The class actions at issue arose out of a 2011 agreement to settle a patent lawsuit relating to extended-release quetiapine fumarate, an anti-psychotic drug sold by AstraZeneca under the brand-name Seroquel XR®. AstraZeneca paid Handa Pharmaceuticals LLC $4 million in cash, licensed the asserted patent exclusively to Handa as of November 2016 (i.e., a year before the patent's pediatric exclusivity period ended), and agreed not to launch its own generic version of Seroquel during the 180-day period in which only Handa and AstraZeneca had FDA approval to lawfully market a generic version of Seroquel-thus ensuring that the only generic versions of Seroquel on the market during that period would be sold by Handa, which enjoyed a 180-day period of exclusivity as the generic first filer. Handa intended to call an expert to testify that an ingredient of Handa's generic versions of Seroquel "can be considered a 'gelling agent' as that phrase was construed in the underlying infringement case" between Handa and AstraZeneca. Because the undisputed record evidence establishes that the question of whether CSD was a gelling agent was not an issue in the underlying patent case at the time AstraZeneca and Handa reached a settlement agreement, the opinion that CSD could constitute a gelling agent had no relevance to the likely outcome of the underlying patent case or the reasonableness of the challenged settlement agreement. However, Plaintiffs did not cite any case law or other legal authority to support their position, and it is undisputed that Handa allowed some (albeit very limited) discovery of the subjective beliefs of Handa's CEO about the underlying patent case (In re Seroquel XR (Extended Release Quetiapine Fumarate) Antitrust Litigation, No. 1:20-cv-01076-CFC (D. Del. Mar. 20, 2025)).

ANTITRUST—N.D. Ill.: A former employer of Sinai Health System was unable to state Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act and False Claims Act claims against his employer, according to the federal district court in Chicago. The employee did not provide any specifics on how the alleged discrimination and retaliation occurred, nor did he identify a protected characteristic or action that triggered the adverse actions. Without more, the vague allegations did not support a federal claim that would give the court jurisdiction (Webb v. Sinai Chicago Hospital, No. 1:23-cv-00813 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 20, 2025)).

ANTITRUST NEWS: The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has granted authorization to Virgin Australia and Qatar Airways to allow them to engage in cooperative conduct under an integrated alliance for five years, doubling the frequency of flights between Doha and major Australian airports. Under the integrated alliance, the two airlines will commence 28 new weekly return services between Doha and the major airports in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Virgin Australia will use Qatar Airways’ aircraft and crew to operate the new services under a ‘wet lease’ arrangement. “We consider that the conduct is likely to result in public benefits such as adding additional capacity on flights between Australia and the Middle East and is likely to result in minimal, if any, public detriment,” ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey said.

ANTITRUST NEWS: At the tech.eu Summit 2025, Jessica Lennard, Chief Strategy Officer at the UK Competition and Markets Authority, delivered a speech reviewing the CMA’s recent accomplishments and priorities as the UK’s primary competition and consumer protection authority.

ANTITRUST NEWS: Three former high-ranking members of the Biden Administration’s antitrust, consumer protection, and public economic law teams, Seth Frotman, Sam Levine, and Doha Mekki, are joining UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice as senior fellows. Levine was director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection from 2021 until earlier this year. Mekki held the top roles in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, serving until earlier this year as the acting assistant attorney general—the agency’s top antitrust official. Frotman was until recently general counsel and senior adviser to the director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

ACQUISITIONS & MERGERS NEWS: The EU Directorate-General for Competition has launched a call for tender for an economic study on the dynamic effects of mergers, such as its impact on incentives to innovate and invest. The study aims to provide analytical foundations to assess whether a merger has a positive or negative impact on these dynamic factors, and how they trade off against static factors—such as changes in prices or output. DG Competition invites economic researchers and experienced practitioners to submit their state-of-the-art proposals by May 5, 2025.

CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: The FTC announced that it is requiring operators of a deceptive business opportunity to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle allegations they misled consumers with false promises of big returns selling goods through Amazon and Walmart. The FTC previously filed suit in October 2024 and obtained a temporary restraining order shutting down the operations, alleging that the companies and their operators made false claims that consumers could earn large profits from online e-commerce stores that the defendants would establish and operate for them. For example, they promised that consumers would generate sales of “$100K+ per month” and that their stores could become “million-dollar” operations. These promises rarely, if ever, materialized, and most consumers lost the tens of thousands of dollars they each invested in the business opportunity. Under the newly announced settlement orders, Trevor Duffy Young and Wessam Baiz, along with two companies associated with Baiz, will turn over the profits they made from the alleged scam, which operated under the names Lunar Capital Ventures, Ecom Genie and Profitable Automation, and before that as Valiant Consultants. The order against Baiz and his companies, Baiz Sales and Salespreneurs, requires them to turn over assets held by the court-appointed receiver in the case along with the contents of numerous bank accounts to the FTC. The order contains a total monetary judgment of $13,988,712, which is largely suspended based on an inability to pay. The order against Young requires him to turn over the contents of several bank accounts to the FTC. The order contains a monetary judgment of $6,024,211, which is largely suspended based on an inability to pay (FTC v. Ecom Genie Consulting LLC, No. 1:24-cv-23976-RKA (S.D. Fla. Mar. 19, 2025)).

CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: A continuance jointly requested by the parties in the FTC administrative action against Asbury Automotive Group, Inc., several related entities, and several individuals (together, the Respondents), accusing the Respondents of violating the provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and its implementing Regulation B has been granted. The evidentiary hearing shall commence at 10:00 a.m. on October 20, 2025, and it was further ordered that all pre-hearing deadlines in the proceeding were extended by 60 days. The order noted that on October 4, 2024, Respondents filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief from this administrative proceeding on constitutional grounds in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. On October 14, 2024, Respondents filed an expedited motion for a preliminary injunction to stay this administrative proceeding pending adjudication of Respondents’ claims in the federal action. The defendants in the court action subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the federal court complaint and that those motions have been fully briefed (In the Matter of Asbury Automotive Group, FTC Docket No. 9436, (Mar. 25, 2025)).

CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: Complaint Counsel’s motion to requesting an order compelling Respondents Caremark Rx, LLC, and Zinc Health Services, LLC, to produce certain materials responsive to Complaint Counsel’s First Set of Requests for Production and require Caremark and Zinc to produce materials by a certain date in advance of the fact discovery deadline was denied in the FTC administrative action against the three largest prescription drug benefit managers (PBMs) and their affiliated group purchasing organizations (GPOs) for engaging in practices that artificially inflated the list price of insulin drugs. At issue was only whether Caremark and Zinc should be compelled to produce documents by certain dates in advance of the close of discovery. Complaint Counsel’s request that Caremark and Zinc be compelled to produce documents that Caremark and Zinc have already agreed to produce by a certain date was rejected as unsupported and unwarranted by the administrative law judge (In the Matter of Caremark Rx, L.L.C., FTC Docket No. 9437 (March 25, 2025)).

CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: The Federal Trade Commission named five additional corporate defendants and two individuals in its ongoing case against a student loan debt relief operation. In November 2024, the FTC filed its initial complaint against Nevada-based Superior Servicing and its operator, Dennise Merdjanian, alleging they pretended to be affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education and falsely promised student loan forgiveness, taking millions from student loan borrowers. In November, a federal court temporarily halted the scheme and froze its assets at the request of the FTC, which is seeking a permanent ban on the defendants’ deceptive practices. The amended complaint adds corporate defendants Sunrise Solutions USA LLC, Alumni Advantage LLC, Student Processing Center Group LLC, SPCTWO LLC, Accredit LLC and individual defendants Eric Caldwell and David Hernandez, alleging they work with Merdjanian to operate an unlawful debt relief operation through a maze of shifting corporate entities that prey on consumers with student loan debt (FTC v. Superior Servicing LLC, No. 2:24-cv-02163-GMN-MDC (D. Nev.)).

FRANCHISING & DISTRIBUTION—W.D. Wis.: In a suit brought by specialty brick products distributor United Brick & Fireplace Inc. asserting that Interstate Brick violated the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Act when it terminated their exclusive contract, and that Jireh Brick & Stone and The Brickyard Incorporated tortiously interfered with United Brick’s exclusive contract to sell Interstate Brick products, United Brick’s motion to remand to Wisconsin state court was granted. United Brick, a Wisconsin corporation, has distributed Interstate Brick products in Wisconsin for over 30 years under an exclusive dealership agreement. Interstate Brick is a fictitious business name of Basalite Building Products, LLC, a limited liability company owned by California corporation Pacific Coast Building Products, Inc. In January 2024, Interstate Brick terminated the exclusive dealership agreement, citing incurable deficiencies. Interstate Brick authorized Jireh Brick & Stone and The Brickyard, both Wisconsin-based entities, to distribute its products and allegedly encouraged them to solicit United Brick’s customers. Interstate Brick contended that the Wisconsin defendants, Jireh Brick & Stone and The Brickyard, were improperly joined. The court disagreed. According to the allegations, it was reasonable to infer that the Wisconsin defendants knew that United Brick had an exclusive contract to sell Interstate Brick products to certain customers and intentionally interfered by soliciting the customers to contract with them instead. Thus, it was at least reasonably possible that a state court would allow United Brick to proceed with tortious interference claims against the Wisconsin defendants. Further, even if fraudulent misjoinder were a viable theory in this circuit, it would not justify dismissing the Wisconsin defendants. United Brick’s claims against all three defendants arise from a common event: the termination of United Brick’s exclusive contract to sell Interstate Brick products, the court determined (United Brick & Fireplace Inc. v. Basalite Building Products, LLC, No. 3:24-cv-00305-jdp (W.D. Wis. Mar. 18, 2025)).

UNFAIR PRACTICES—11th Cir.: Allied Marine, Inc. was properly denied a new trial in a Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA) claim filed by a boat owner that was sold a boat that was unsafe to use. A jury awarded the boat owner over $500,000 in damages under the MMWA. Allied Marine filed a motion for remittitur or new trial because “the evidence does not support an award greater than $41,155 as a matter of law.” Although Allied Marine conceded that the warranted value of the yacht was $1,254,000 (the cost of the boat), it argued the damages at most should be the “projected cost of repairs” for the yacht’s many troubles ($40,000). The Florida Supreme Court has cautioned courts to leave damage awards intact unless the award “is so inordinately large as obviously to exceed the maximum limit of a reasonable range within which the jury may properly operate.” The court found that the evidence supported the jury verdict. The jury was free to side with the boat owner and reject Allied Marine’s damages calculation. The amount that the jury awarded was not “indicative of prejudice, passion, or corruption”; did not “ignore[] the evidence”; did not involve “speculation or conjecture”; bore “a reasonable relation to the amount of damages proved and the injury suffered”; and “could be adduced in a logical manner by reasonable persons” (Horowitz v. Allied Marine, Inc., No. 24-12445 (11th Cir. Mar. 24, 2025)).

Attorneys: Molly Rucki for the FTC. Philip L. Martin (Vallis Legal, PLLC) for Ecom Genie Consulting LLC. Brandon M. Pellegrino (Bowman and Brooke LLP) for Ford Motor Co. Alexandra C. Markel (Bodman PLC) for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Mutual Insurance Co. Kevin J. Palmersheim (Palmersheim Dettmann, S.C.) for United Brick & Fireplace, Inc. Isaac Stern Brodkey (Stafford Rosenbaum LLP) for Basalite Building Products, LLC d/b/a Interstate Brick. Bruce Stephen Rogow (Bruce S. Rogow, PA) for Kenneth A. Horowitz. Andrew Paul Kawel (Kawel PLLC) for Allied Marine, Inc. Adam M. Steinfeld (Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP) for JM Smith Corp. d/b/a Smith Drug Co. Michael J. Barry (Grant & Eisenhofer PA) for Law Enforcement Health Benefits, Inc. Robert J. Kriner, Jr. (Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP) for KPH Healthcare Services, Inc. Daniel M. Silver (McCarter & English, LLP) for AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals L. P. Jason C. Lynch, U.S. Department of Justice, for the U.S. Jack B. Blumenfeld (Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP) for Par Pharmaceutical Inc. Daryyl Webb, pro se. Lucy B. Bednarek (Littler Mendelson P.C.) for Sinai Chicago Hospital.

Companies: Ecom Genie Consulting LLC; Lunar Capital Ventures LLC d/b/a Lunar Automation and Profitable Automation, LLC; Ford Motor Co.; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Mutual Insurance Co.; United Brick & Fireplace, Inc.; Basalite Building Products, LLC d/b/a Interstate Brick; Caremark Rx, LLC; Zinc Health Services, LLC; Asbury Automotive Group, Inc.; Allied Marine, Inc.; JM Smith Corp. d/b/a Smith Drug Co.; Law Enforcement Health Benefits, Inc.; KPH Healthcare Services, Inc.; AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals L. P.; Par Pharmaceutical Inc.; Sinai Chicago Hospital; Sunrise Solutions USA LLC, Alumni Advantage LLC, Student Processing Center Group LLC, SPCTWO LLC, Accredit LLC; Superior Servicing; Virgin Australia; Qatar Airways

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