Practice Areas
Industries
Competition
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May 16, 2012
PJM Agencies Slam LIPA Bid For $6M Cut Of Constellation Deal
State agencies part of the regional transmission group PJM Interconnection LLC on Tuesday objected to a bid by the Long Island Power Authority and others for a cut of a $6 million allocation from Constellation Energy Commodities Group Inc.'s manipulative trading settlement to the PJM regions.
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May 16, 2012
Silver Manipulation May Have Just Been 'Hedging': JPMorgan
JPMorgan Chase & Co. told a New York federal judge Wednesday its large bet against silver during the financial crisis may have amounted to simple hedging, denying putative class action claims that it sought to manipulate the market and reap outsize profits.
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May 16, 2012
Kansas' Take On Leegin Shows Risks Of Vertical Price Deals
The Kansas Supreme Court's recent decision that resale price maintenance agreements are illegal under state law highlights the need for national manufacturers to tread cautiously when setting pricing policies with their distributors and retailers, even in states that previously seemed safe for vertical agreements, experts say.
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May 15, 2012
FCC Asks Verizon To Speak Up On Spectrum Sale Plan
The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asked Verizon Wireless to provide more information after it announced it will sell its 700 MHz spectrum licenses if its purchase of certain advanced wireless services spectrum licenses is completed.
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May 15, 2012
4th Circ. Won't Knock Down Real Estate Listing Antitrust Suits
Two putative class actions accusing South Carolina real estate listing services and various related brokerages of conspiring to restrain competition survived a Fourth Circuit challenge Monday when an appeals panel upheld a trial court's refusal to dismiss the suits.
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May 15, 2012
ProMedica Knew Of FTC Merger Probe, Insurer Tells 6th Circ.
A unit of OneBeacon Insurance Group Ltd. told the Sixth Circuit on Monday that it wasn't obligated to cover defense costs in antitrust litigation challenging a merger involving ProMedica Health System Inc. because ProMedica failed to report the potential claim on time.
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May 15, 2012
Apple, Publishers Can't Close Book On Price-Fixing MDL
Apple Inc. and a group of book publishers lost a bid Tuesday to dismiss consumer class actions alleging they conspired to inflate the price of e-books, after a New York federal judge deemed the allegations plausible enough to proceed.
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May 15, 2012
Steptoe Snags Ex-IDB Investigations Chief With FCPA Chops
Steptoe & Johnson LLP has snagged a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act pro and former chief of the Inter-American Development Bank's Office of Institutional Integrity, to expand its international regulation and compliance and commercial litigation practices and Latin American presence, the firm said Tuesday.
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May 15, 2012
UPMC Says West Penn Merger Warrants Stay Of Antitrust Suit
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on Monday asked a Pennsylvania federal judge to stay an antitrust suit brought by West Penn Allegheny Health System due to a pending $475 million acquisition of West Penn by insurer Highmark Inc.
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May 15, 2012
Whistleblowers Want $9M In Sun Microsystems Kickback Deal
Two whistleblowers whose False Claims Act and kickback suit against Oracle Corp. unit Sun Microsystems Inc. ended in a $46 million settlement with the federal government told an Arkansas federal court Monday that they deserve a $9.3 million cut of the deal.
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May 15, 2012
European Court Adviser Backs EUR53M AstraZeneca Antitrust Fine
A European Union court has correctly fined AstraZeneca PLC €52.5 million ($62 million) for abusing its market dominance and the European patent system in order to block generic versions of ulcer drug Losec, an adviser to the court said Tuesday.
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May 14, 2012
FCC Suspends Ruling On Comcast Bias Against Tennis Channel
The Federal Communications Commission on Monday stayed its December decision asking Comcast Cable Communications LLC to carry The Tennis Channel Inc. on the same package as its affiliated sports networks in its first finding that a cable operator had flouted its anti-discrimination rules.
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May 14, 2012
AUO Exec Says DOJ Overreaching In Bid To Bar Hogan Atty
Convicted AU Optronics Corp. executive Hui Hsiung accused the government Monday of overstating the reach of ethics law to bar him from hiring Hogan Lovells attorney Neal Katyal even though the former acting solicitor general worked not on the price-fixing prosecution but on a related appeal.
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May 14, 2012
FTC Lures Back Davis Polk Antitrust Pro To Lead Econ Bureau
Antitrust specialist Howard Shelanski confirmed Monday that he is leaving his position at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP to return to the Federal Trade Commission, this time as director of the agency's Bureau of Economics.
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May 14, 2012
Blue Cross Hit With Market Allocation Suit In Tenn.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee was hit Thursday with an antitrust class action by a customer claiming the health insurance giant conspired with other BCBS plans nationwide to divide geographic markets, creating a monopoly that illegally inflated premiums for thousands of policyholders.
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May 14, 2012
Google-Backed Wind Power Line Clears Competition Review
The U.S. Department of the Interior determined Monday that a massive Google Inc.-backed transmission project to connect planned East Coast wind farms to the electrical grid faced no land use competition, removing a regulatory hurdle for the developers.
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May 14, 2012
Vinson & Elkins Opens San Francisco Office
Vinson & Elkins LLP has opened a new office in San Francisco that will focus on white collar, antitrust and commercial litigation, as well as intellectual property law, the firm announced Monday.
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May 14, 2012
New Info Stalls EU's Google Antitrust Probe
The results of the European Commission's investigation into Google Inc.'s search and Internet advertising practices have been delayed by new information, the regulator's antitrust chief said Monday, a few weeks after travel sites TripAdvisor Inc. and Expedia Inc. became the latest to complain about the Web giant.
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May 14, 2012
Ex-Bronx Sen. Espada Found Guilty Of Stealing From Nonprofit
A Brooklyn federal jury found Pedro Espada Jr. guilty on four counts of theft Monday, but couldn't reach a verdict on conspiracy charges, after prosecutors accused the former New York state senator and his son of rigging bids and stealing $500,000 from their nonprofit health care network.
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May 14, 2012
Polish Court Denies PGE's $2.3B Rival Energy Co. Buy
A Polish court on Monday rejected state-owned energy company PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna SA's bid to buy rival Energa SA for 7.53 billion zloty ($2.3 billion), affirming a determination by the country's antitrust watchdog that the deal would harm competition.
Expert Analysis
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Old-Fashioned Conspiracy In Cutting-Edge Technology
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the U.S. Department of Justice will continue to pursue litigation against Apple Inc., Macmillan Publishers Ltd. and Penguin Group Inc. for alleged price-fixing of e-books. The irony of this litigation is that it would appear that all the involved defendants were able to keep pace with technology, but not the simple evolution of corporate governance and compliance expectations, says Debra Rade of Rade Law LLC.
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Plea Agreements With Antitrust Division Post-VandeBrake
If it is not an abuse of discretion for a trial judge to apply whichever sentencing guideline he prefers — as in the Eighth Circuit's decision in the VandeBrake case — then it becomes much more palatable for a defendant to roll the dice at trial rather than taking his chances that a judge will impose the sentence in a plea deal, say Brady Dugan and Diana Gillis of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
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Using Federal Antitrust Law To Void Class Action Waivers
Following the Second Circuit's decision in In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, class action arbitration waivers may be voidable if the plaintiffs can show that the enforcement of those waivers will strip them of their federal statutory rights under the Sherman Act, say Michael Christian and Demetrius Lambrinos of Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason LLP.
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The Latest FCPA Target: Private Fund Advisers
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case against a former Morgan Stanley executive — the first FCPA case involving a private fund investment adviser — reemphasizes to investment firms the importance of establishing effective anti-corruption internal controls in protecting both the entity and individual personnel from such enforcement, say attorneys with Ropes & Gray LLP.
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What Companies Can Learn From AU Optronics
The U.S. v. AU Optronics Corp. case demonstrated that the U.S. Department of Justice can successfully prosecute non-U.S. corporate and individual members of a global cartel. The verdicts provide a number of important lessons about the risks and rewards of forcing the government to prove its case in court, say John Majoras and Ryan Thomas of Jones Day.
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Where Rubber Hits Road: Examples Of Alternative Fees
Creating new approaches to fee agreements is something to embrace rather than fear — and when structured and managed correctly, it can be financially advantageous. Take, for example, fixed-fee arrangements, result-based billing and portfolio billing, say Bill Rudnick and Keith Maziarek of DLA Piper.
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Is Double Deletion Of Emails Evidence Of Conspiracy?
The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent e-book price-fixing lawsuit includes allegations that the publishers recognized the “illicit nature” of their communications because they "double deleted" email. Before you embrace the DOJ’s view that double deletion is nefarious, you may want to look in the mirror, says Karin Scholz Jenson of Baker & Hostetler LLP.
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Lessons From Review Of UK Banks' Anti-Bribery Systems
Although the U.K. Financial Services Authority's recent review of anti-bribery and corruption systems at investment banks was critical of the investment banks’ systems in a number of respects, the FSA has provided valuable pointers for all financial firms — not just investment banks, say Karolos Seeger, Matthew Getz and Warren Balakrishnan of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
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Reducing Corruption Risk By Disrupting Moral Hazard
Controlling "moral hazard" — a phenomenon inherent in third-party business relationships — is a key factor in efforts to counter corruption. Yet, moral hazard is seldom addressed or discussed by anti-corruption professionals in the context of mitigating the risk of a regulatory event, say Glenn Ware and Shanti Salas of PwC and Suzanne Folsom of Academi.
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The Costs Of A Potential Blue Cross Conspiracy
Two recent lawsuits allege that Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association entities in North Carolina and Alabama have violated federal and state antitrust laws by engaging in concerted action with other BCBS plans nationwide. If the plaintiffs’ allegations of market allocation are true, the cases may have significant implications for providers, say attorneys with King & Spalding LLP.