Antitrust Lawyer Blog

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments from Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp., and Qwest Communications International, Inc. in a case that may either help companies’ efforts to fight off antitrust law suits, or promote consumers challenges to what appears to be illegal coordination of activities by competing companies…

On June 27, the Commission authorized the filing of comments, prepared jointly with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, with the New York State Assembly Committee on the Judiciary regarding proposed legislation to expand the scope of activities constituting the unauthorized practice of law.In the comments, the FTC and DOJ address Assembly Bill A05596,…

On June 27, the Department of Justice announced that it will require The McClatchy Company and Knight Ridder Inc. to divest the St. Paul Pioneer Press in order to proceed with their proposed multi-billion dollar newspaper merger. The DOJ said that the transaction, as originally proposed, would have eliminated head-to-head competition between McClatchy and Knight…

In 1996, Conway (then known as McLane) submitted a complaint to the Spanish Competition, the Servicio de Defencia de la Competencia (“SDC”) authorities, alleging that the former public tobacco monopoly, Tabacalera (now known as Altadis) abused its dominant position by not allowing Conway to distribute Tabacalera tobacco brands. A 2002 SDC decision found that Tabacalera…

On June 26, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) appeal of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision that Schering-Plough Corp. (“Schering”) legally paid two generic drug competitors to stay out of the market as part of a settlement to patent litigation. In the past, the FTC has taken a consistently…

On June 26, orthopedic device manufacturers revealed the issuance of federal subpoenas tied to potential violation of antitrust law from the Department of Justice. Zimmer Holdings Inc., Biomet Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Stryker Corp. all said they had received subpoenas from the Antitrust Division demanding documents related to the manufacture and sale of the…

On June 23, the DOJ filed a petition asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to hold the American Bar Association (“ABA”) in civil contempt for violating multiple provisions of a 1996 antitrust consent decree. The consent decree prohibited the ABA from misusing the law school accreditation process. The DOJ also filed…

On June 22, the DOJ announced that the $16 billion merger between Exelon Corp. and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. can proceed as long as they divest six electricity generating plants, which in total provide more than 5,600 megawatts of generating capacity. The DOJ is making the companies shed two generating plants in Pennsylvania and…

On June 21, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin said that the agency would likely act on the acquisition of Adelphia Communications Corp. (“Adelphia”) by Time Warner Inc. (“Time Warner”) and Comcast Corp. (“Comcast”) in mid-July. Martin indicated the mid-July action in comments to reporters following the agency’s public meeting, stating “I think the commission…

The American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”), a group of small telecommunications companies, and Sprint Nextel Corp. (“Sprint”) have joined to oppose AT&T Inc.’s (“AT&T”) bid to acquire BellSouth Corp. (“BellSouth”). In its June 5th filings with the FCC, the ACLU said it wants the commission to hold up approval of the merger until the phone…