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Competition
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May 14, 2013
Delta Asks DC Circ. To Shut Down $3.4B Air India Loan
Delta Air Lines Inc. on Tuesday urged the D.C. Circuit to revoke $3.4 billion in loans guaranteed by the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. that allow Air India Ltd. to purchase 30 planes, saying the bank ignored the effects of the added route competition on U.S. airlines.
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May 14, 2013
Lipitor Pay-For-Delay Suit Returned To W.Va. State Court
A federal judge on Monday sent to state court West Virginia's allegations that Pfizer Inc. entered an anti-competitive settlement of a patent dispute with a company seeking to make generic Lipitor, ruling the suit did not arise under federal law.
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May 14, 2013
Dell Accuses Toshiba, Sony Of Fixing Prices For Disk Drives
Dell Inc. on Monday struck Toshiba Corp., Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and other major electronics companies with an antitrust lawsuit in Texas federal court, accusing them of engaging in a wide-ranging conspiracy to fix prices in the market for optical disk drives.
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May 14, 2013
Google Rival Urges EU To Reject Search Antitrust Deal
A Google Inc. rival warned Tuesday that the company's proposed antitrust settlement with the European Commission wouldn't stop the Internet giant from manipulating its search results to the detriment of its competitors and might even make the situation worse.
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May 14, 2013
EU Regulators Raid Sugar Producers Over Cartel Concerns
European Union regulators raided the locations of sugar producers in multiple European Union member states in April over concerns that they were engaging in cartel activity, the European Commission's competition chief said Monday.
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May 14, 2013
'Kids For Cash' Plaintiffs Win Class Cert.
A Pennsylvania federal judge on Tuesday granted certification to the classes and subclasses of juveniles who were allegedly harmed or sent to private prisons in Pennsylvania’s notorious “kids for cash” judge kickback scheme.
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May 14, 2013
AUO Pushes 9th Circ. To Nix $500M Antitrust Verdict
AU Optronics Corp. again urged the Ninth Circuit on Monday to overturn its $500 million price-fixing conviction, warning that the U.S. Department of Justice hadn't made a convincing argument for why U.S. antitrust law should reach the foreign electronics company's actions abroad.
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May 14, 2013
Visa Cuts Card Fees To Soothe EU Competition Worries
Visa Europe has agreed to cap certain interbank fees on consumer credit card payments and allow merchants to shop for lower rates across borders in a move aimed at resolving a long-running European Commission antitrust probe, the EC said Tuesday.
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May 14, 2013
EU Allows Aluminum Joint Venture, With Concessions
Europe's competition watchdog on Monday approved a joint venture between two Norwegian companies in the aluminum extrusion market after they agreed to sell off some assets, including operations in the Netherlands and a soft-alloy extrusions plant in Norway.
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May 14, 2013
Reader's Digest Says Ex-Workers Misused Business Info
The Reader's Digest Association Inc. on Monday launched a suit in New York bankruptcy court, alleging that three former employees have unfairly diverted business from the bankrupt media company and improperly exercised control over its estate assets, including proprietary business information.
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May 14, 2013
Sanofi Fined $53M In France Over Generic Plavix Smears
France’s antitrust regulator has fined Sanofi SA €40.6 million ($52.7 million) after ruling the drugmaker had engaged in a campaign to discourage doctors and pharmacists from prescribing or substituting generic versions of its former blockbuster blood thinner Plavix, the watchdog announced Tuesday.
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May 14, 2013
Q&A With Robins Kaplan's Ryan Marth
The reach of Section 1 of the Sherman Act into joint ventures and more novel business promises to be an important issue in the coming years, says Ryan Marth, a principal at Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP specializing in antitrust.
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May 13, 2013
Docs' Prior Blue Cross Deal May Kill Bid To Join Antitrust Suit
A Florida federal judge on Monday told three doctors suing Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans that a previous settlement's release would be a “tough hurdle” to overcome in their efforts to join a putative antitrust class action against the insurer in Alabama.
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May 13, 2013
UK Deferred Prosecution Law May Avoid FCPA Pitfalls
By adopting deferred prosecution agreements but subjecting the deals to heavy court oversight, the U.K. may sidestep some of the criticism that has plagued U.S. prosecutors during a recent Foreign Corrupt Practice Act offensive, attorneys say.
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May 13, 2013
CR Bard Pays $48M To Settle FCA, Kickback Claims
C.R. Bard Inc. will hand over approximately $48.3 million to the federal government to settle whistleblower allegations that it filed false Medicare claims and paid hospitals various kickbacks to use its brachytherapy seeds for prostate cancer treatment, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.
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May 13, 2013
S. Africa Antitrust Watchdog Faces Key Test In Sasol Case
The trial over whether Sasol Chemical Industries Ltd. charged too much for its plastics products kicked off Monday, in a case that offers a crucial test of whether South Africa's antitrust agency can finally make a so-called excessive pricing charge stick after two high-profile failures.
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May 13, 2013
Tech Workers Renew Class Bid In Anti-Poaching Case
Former software engineers at Apple Inc., Google Inc. and other technology giants moved to pare down their bid for class certification Friday after a recent ruling that they lacked evidence showing an alleged plot to fix employee pay affected all salaried workers.
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May 13, 2013
Kmart Allowed To Subpoena FCA Whistleblower’s Records
An Illinois federal judge refused Monday to quash a subpoena for the employment records of a Kmart Corp. pharmacist who claims the company violated false claims and anti-kickback laws by offering discounts to Medicare and other prescription drug customers, finding the subpoena isn’t meant to harass.
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May 13, 2013
UK, US Officials Split On Libor Transition
The U.K. official charged with overhauling Libor reportedly said the existing process for setting the benchmark rate must be preserved even as the global financial system moves to a transaction-based system, putting him at odds with his U.S. counterpart.
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May 13, 2013
Wells Fargo, QBE Reach $19M Force-Placed Insurance Deal
Wells Fargo Bank NA, QBE Specialty Insurance Co. and a class of Florida homeowners have reached a settlement over allegations the companies pushed overpriced property insurance and received kickbacks, agreeing to pay up to $19.25 million to class members, according to court documents filed Monday.
Expert Analysis
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AUO Case Could Have Major Impact On Cartel Investigations
The recently filed appellate briefs in the Ninth Circuit case of U.S. v. AU Optronics Corporation raise issues of critical importance in the prosecution of foreign cartel cases in the U.S., including the extraterritorial reach of the Sherman Act and the limitations of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvement Act, and whether foreign price-fixing is subject to the "rule of reason" or per se treatment, says Samuel Miller of Sidley Austin LLP.
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FTC Shakeup Means No New Initiatives Soon
As a result of recent changes, the five-member Federal Trade Commission is left with two Democrats, two Republicans and one open seat, and seems likely in the near term to focus on actions where there is the bipartisan consensus necessary to obtain the three votes required to take action, say Steven Cernak and Suzanne Wahl of Schiff Hardin LLP.
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FTC's Opinion On Norman PHO — Significant But Unclear
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice continue to enforce the antitrust laws in the health care field as illustrated by a recent FTC advisory opinion on a Norman, Okla., physician hospital organization. This opinion is significant as it approves a multiprovider network not involving an accountable care organization but also leaves a number of questions unanswered, say attorneys with Thompson Hine LLP.
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NY Anti-Corruption Law Could Be A Game-Changer
Following the recent arrests of two New York state lawmakers on federal bribery charges, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed legislation creating a new class of public corruption crimes. The proposals have the potential to increase the power of the state government to prosecute those accused of public corruption and fraud, say attorneys with Nixon Peabody LLP.
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How New Carveout Policy Will Impact Cartel Plea Deals
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has announced that it will no longer publicly list the names of individuals excluded from the protections afforded by corporate plea agreements. The consequences should be felt immediately in ongoing cartel investigations, and should also have important ramifications for future investigations, say attorneys with Hogan Lovells LLP.
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How To Perform A Corruption Risk Assessment
Virtually every authoritative source of guidance on effective anti-corruption compliance emphasizes the importance of conducting a companywide risk assessment. Companies may be tempted to gloss over this step, but without a clear vision of its particular corruption risks, a company's compliance efforts may turn out to be needlessly costly, inefficient and ineffective, say attorneys with K&L Gates LLP.
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How Do You Solve A Problem Like ReDigi?
A federal district court in New York recently ruled against ReDigi, the fledgling digital music resale service provider, in a copyright challenge brought by Capital Records. Although the result was no surprise, the decision — which will likely be appealed — leaves digital copyright law lagging some distance behind its favored hard copy brother, says Peter Karol of New England Law, Boston.
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What Do Staub And Sharef Really Tell Us?
While SEC v. Straub and SEC v. Sharef have provoked considerable commentary, they provide little, if any, insight for corporations in how to handle areas in which FCPA jurisdiction plays a key role, such as foreign acquisitions, joint ventures and successor liability. Moreover, the holdings appear to be closely wedded to the specific facts, rather than an illuminating new principle, say Robb Adkins and Krista Enns of Winston & Strawn LLP.
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Ancillary Transaction Provisions Need Antitrust Review
The remarkable remedies in the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed consent order in its most recent merger case suggest caution regarding the use of commonplace, ancillary transaction provisions — even in transactions that are not reportable to the federal antitrust agencies, say Bruce Sokler and Farrah Short of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
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FERC's Unclear Guidance On Horizontal Market Power
In declining to authorize a transaction among MACH Gen LLC, Saddle Mountain Power LLC and New Harquahala Generating Company LLC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has provided some guidance regarding when the transfer of control is sufficient to mitigate the failure of FERC’s horizontal market power screens but with little clarity, say attorneys with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.