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Law360 (March 13, 2020, 7:58 PM EDT) -- The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have put in place a temporary e-filing system for any premerger notification documents and said they were no longer accepting hard copies in order to avoid spreading the new coronavirus.
The Premerger Notification Office stopped accepting hard copy and DVD submissions at close of business Friday, with no word on when they might start doing so again. The office said that it won't accept filings Monday, but that the e-filing system should be up and running by Tuesday morning.
"While this temporary system is in place, early termination will not be granted for any filing," the office said in its release.
Filings previously had to be sent by mail or delivered in person to the PNO and the Justice Department's premerger unit. The office said that the decision to move to an electronic filing system was made "consistent with guidance" issued by the Office of Personnel Management.
Put in place by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, the program is intended to give the two agencies that regulate competition a heads up about any larger mergers before they take place. Companies planning to join must submit paperwork along with a filing fee between $45,000 and $280,000, depending on the size of the proposed merger.
In-person and mail-in filings are not the only things the Federal Trade Commission is putting on pause as the government clambers to reduce points of contact between people to avoid transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The agency also canceled a workshop on the current draft of its vertical merger guidelines that was slated to take place Wednesday.
After the World Health Organization declared the global outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic Wednesday, closure announcements started rolling in from courts and government agencies. Federal courts in more than half of the states have enacted some change in operations, with some suspending jury trials and others pulling oral arguments off the calendar for the next few weeks.
Washington has been hit particularly hard by the virus with more than 400 diagnosed cases and 31 deaths from COVID-19. In response, the Western District of Washington said it has postponed until further notice all civil and criminal matters that require an in-person hearing before a judge or magistrate.
The nation's highest court will continue to be open for official business, but closed to the public as of Thursday.
--Additional reporting by Sarah Jarvis. Editing by Peter Rozovsky.
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