Antitrust in the News

Harrison (Buzz) Frahn, Michael R. Morey, Lauren Ditty (Summer Associate)Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP On May 11, 2018, the Ninth Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington’s dismissal of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America’s (the “Chamber’s”) federal antitrust claims against the City of Seattle in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of Am. v. City of Seattle, 890 F.3d 769 (9th Cir. 2018). The suit arose from a recently enacted… Read more

Harrison (Buzz) Frahn, Thomas M. Cramer, Lily Cron (Summer Associate)Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP In an 5-4 opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court ruled on June 25, 2018, that American Express’s (“Amex”) practice of using anti-steering provisions, which prevent merchants from offering customers incentives to use credit cards with lower fees, is not an “unreasonable restraint on trade” in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The credit-card industry is a two-sided market, meaning that in… Read more

Elizabeth C. PritzkerPritzker Levine LLP On July 25, 2018, Judge Valerie Caproni issued opinions granting motions to dismiss brought by several “Non-Fixing Banks” in two multi-district cases alleging conspiracies to fix the prices of precious metals and futures. The two cases are: (1) In re Commodity Exchange Inc., Gold Futures and Options Trading Litigation, No. 14-MD-2548, 2018 WL 3585276 (SDNY July 25, 2018) (“Gold”), alleging a conspiracy to fix the price of physical gold and gold-denominated financial securities; and (2) In re… Read more

Jeanifer Parsigian Winston & Strawn LLP On June 14, 2018, in a unanimous opinion reversing the Second Circuit, the United States Supreme Court held that U.S. courts are not required to give conclusive effect to a foreign government’s proffered statement of its own law. Animal Sci. Prod., Inc. v. Hebei Welcome Pharm. Co., 138 S. Ct. 1865, 1869 (2018).The opinion resolved a circuit split on the import of views offered by a foreign government on the meaning of its law that emerged… Read more

Hanson Yu, Legal InternFederal Trade Commission On June 3, 2018 California Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CPA”). The CPA, which takes effect in January 2020, will give consumers unprecedented control over data that businesses gather on them and imposes significant penalties on businesses that do not comply. The CPA will force companies to establish new protocols that comply with the law’s requirements. Many of the provisions are new to the United States but appear… Read more

Jonathan LevinePritzker Levine LLP In a victory for digital privacy advocates, on June 22, 2018, the United States Supreme Court held that individuals maintain legitimate expectations of privacy, for Fourth Amendment purposes, in their cell-site location information (CSLI) maintained by cell phone companies and that the government generally may not collect CSLI from cell phone companies without a warrant. Carpenter v. United States, __ U.S. __ (2018), 2018 WL 3073916.In a 5-4 opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court… Read more

David M. GoldsteinFarmer Brownstein Jaeger & Goldstein LLP In a “gig economy” decision that will please employers but disappoint independent contractors, the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of a Sherman Act Section 1 challenge to Seattle’s ordinance authorizing a collective-bargaining process for independent contractors who work as for-hire drivers for “driver coordinators” such as Uber and Lyft. The Ninth Circuit held that the state-action immunity doctrine did not exempt the ordinance from preemption by the Sherman Act, because… Read more

Lydia Parnes and Edward HolmanWilson Sonsini LLP On June 6, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued its decision in LabMD, Inc. v. FTC, No. 16-16270 (11th Cir. June 6, 2018), a closely watched case in which LabMD challenged the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to regulate the data security practices of private companies. The Eleventh Circuit declined to decide that issue, instead finding that the FTC’s order requiring LabMD to implement certain data security reforms was unenforceable because… Read more

Reid Gaa, Summer AssociateCotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP On June 4, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s dismissal of a class action brought by a consumer against the chocolate manufacturer Mars, Inc. (“Mars”). Reviewing the case de novo, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the plaintiff failed to state a claim under California consumer protection laws, holding, “[i]n the absence of any affirmative misrepresentations . . .… Read more

On April 13, 2018, Judge William H. Orrick of the Northern District of California issued a foreign anti-suit injunction in Huawei Techs., Co. v. Samsung Elecs. Co. blocking Chinese technology company Huawei Technologies, Co. (“Huawei”) from enforcing an injunction issued by the Intermediate People’s Court of Shenzhen (“Shenzhen Court”) that would have forced Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (“Samsung”) to shut down many of its operations in China. Read more