Antitrust and Consumer Protection
Competition: Spring 2014, Vol. 23, No. 1
Content
- Chair's Column
- Do First Amendment Principles Limit the Antitrust Agencies' Ability To Prohibit Enforcement of Standards-essential Patents?
- Does the First Amendment Immunize Google's Search Engine Search Results From Government Antitrust Scrutiny?
- Editor's Note
- First Amendment Protection For Search Engine Search Results
- Judges Speak Out: the Make-or-break Moment of Certifying a Class With Judges Marsha Berzon, Virginia Phillips, John Wiley, and Curtis Karnow
- Lcd Redux: Follow-on Class Action and Direct Purchaser Litigation From 2012'S Doj Criminal Prosecutions Views from Trial Experts Bruce Simon, Howard Varinsky, and Robert Freitas
- Masthead
- Noerr-pennington: Safeguarding the First Amendment Right To Petition the Government
- Regulation of Companies' Data Security Practices Under the Ftc Act and California Unfair Competition Law
- The Irrelevance of the First Amendment To the Modern Regulation of the Internet
- The Market-participant Exception To State-action Immunity From Antitrust Liability
- The Misapplication of Matsushita's Heightened Summary Judgment Standard
- The Supreme Court In Borough of Duryea V. Guarnieri Signals a Retreat From Pre's Broad Deference To the Right To Petition
- Trial By Sample: a Post-game, Locker Room Chat Exploring the McAdams V. Monier Trial: a Roundtable With Trial Counsel Jeffrey Cereghino and William Stern
- Update On California State Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law and Federal and State Procedural Law
- Landmark Civil Price-fixing Verdicts of 2013: Lessons From the Vitamin C and Urethanes Trials With Trial Counsel and Observers William a. Isaacson, Daniel S. Mason, Joseph Goldberg, and Michael Tubach
LANDMARK CIVIL PRICE-FIXING VERDICTS OF 2013: LESSONS FROM THE VITAMIN C AND URETHANES TRIALS With Trial Counsel and Observers William A. Isaacson, Daniel S. Mason, Joseph Goldberg, and Michael Tubach
Moderated by Heather Tewksbury*
I. INTRODUCTION
The Spring of 2013 witnessed blockbuster verdicts in two civil price-fixing cases. Although these cases share the distinction of resulting in significant verdicts for civil antitrust enforcement, their respective paths to those verdicts could not be more different. The first case hails from an alleged price fixing conspiracy formed in China, and represents many "firsts" for the U.S. judicial system. In re Vitamin C Antitrust Litigation resulted in the first civil price-fixing verdict against Chinese companies in the United States; the first known time that the foreign compulsion defense was presented to a jury at trial; and the first time a former Chinese government representative testified at trial in a U.S. court. On the other end of the spectrum is our second case, In re Urethane Antitrust Litigation, an alleged price-fixing conspiracy born here on U.S. soil. It is significant not only because it represents the largest verdict for a Sherman Act violation last year, but also because the plaintiffs obtained that verdict even without the benefit of criminal indictments or plea agreements. Both cases raise important issues that will impact the continued development of private antitrust enforcement against price-fixing conspiracies for years to come.