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In early March, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra issued a consumer alert on price gouging. Two weeks later, police in San Diego arrested eight people for price gouging. The same week, investigations by Sacramento authorities prompted new warnings from local authorities. Since then, both the Governor and Attorney General have indicated price gouging will remain top of mind. Typically, price gouging laws extend for short periods — weeks or a month — but we now know that California price gouging rules will remain in effect through September.

On April 3, 2018, the Antitrust Division of the U.S Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it had reached a settlement in a matter involving a “no-poaching” agreement between employers—the first such enforcement action under the Trump Administration.  The DOJ’s pursuit of the matter reflects the Department’s continuing scrutiny of

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A split Eighth Circuit recently reversed a prior panel ruling and reignited antitrust claims against distributors of pre-filled propane tanks. The 5-4 majority cited the 1997 Supreme Court decision Klehr v. A.O. Smith Corp. to rule that for allegations of a price-fixing conspiracy under the Sherman Antitrust Act, each sale at an artificially inflated price restarts the statute of limitations.

Defendants in a putative class action lawsuit alleging wage fixing antitrust claims no longer need to count sheep to rest easily. A district court judge in Colorado recently denied plaintiffs’ request for leave to amend, effectively dismissing claims brought by a group of shepherds working under the H-2A Visa Program, which covers agricultural guest workers. In Llacua et al. v. Western Range Association et al. report and recommendation adopted, plaintiffs alleged that two trade associations representing sheep ranchers, and some of their members, conspired to suppress the wages paid to shepherds in violation of the Sherman Act. The Court adopted the Magistrate Judge’s ruling that plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege a conspiracy and failed to allege facts sufficient to warrant granting leave to amend their Complaint a third time, describing the Magistrate Judge’s opinion as a “masterful[] and cogent[]” analysis of the substantive allegations. Because this is one of the first judicial opinions following the DOJ and FTC’s recent announcement of an initiative to prosecute wage fixing claims, the Magistrate’s report and recommendation provides important guidance for associations and their members facing similar claims.

Few cases in the antitrust canon have been invoked more frequently, for the wrong reasons, than the Third Circuit’s 1977 decision in Bogosian v. Gulf Oil. For four decades now – culminating in the recent release of a decision certifying class in the long-running Mushrooms case – litigants and courts have cited a “presumption” or “short-cut” embedded in Bogosian and argued about whether it suffices to warrant class certification in a given case. This short-cut, however, is more fantasy than reality. 

Your client is sued for failure to pay on a contract and says it shouldn’t have to pay because the prices were fixed by a cartel or that it was strong-armed into paying for a “bundle” of services or distribution channels even though it only wanted a subset of the bundle. Is that a defense? After all, aren’t contracts for unlawful ends unenforceable?

The answer, most often, is “no.” A recent decision by a New York Commercial Division judge provides a useful reminder of the fairly limited allowance of antitrust defenses to contract claims.

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