Antitrust & Competition Law

In a world where increasingly consolidated corporate entities exercise ever-greater market power, proper enforcement of antitrust law is necessary to ensure a competitive marketplace. Maintaining competition promotes lower prices, higher quality products and services, and encourages greater innovation.

Antitrust Class Actions

Milberg prosecutes large complex antitrust class actions against some of the world’s largest and most well-funded corporate defendants in sectors such as healthcare, technology, agriculture, and manufacturing. Our leading practitioners successfully represent plaintiffs affected by anticompetitive conduct such as price-fixing, monopolization, monopoly leveraging, tying arrangements, exclusive dealing, and refusals to deal.

Milberg’s Antitrust Practice Group

The globalization of business operations and markets means that anticompetitive acts are frequently not limited to just one country.

With offices in the United States and Europe, our Antitrust Practice Group is building an international presence that enables us to provide global strategic advice and representation on antitrust violations involving multiple jurisdictions.

Antitrust Group practitioners combine deep knowledge of antitrust rules and regulations with unmatched expertise in trial strategy in advocating the optimal remedies for consumers, businesses, and investors harmed by anticompetitive behavior.

The Firm, and Milberg partner, Peggy J. Wedgworth, were appointed Lead Counsel for auto dealerships in In re Dealer Management Systems Antitrust Litigation, a nationwide class action alleging that leading software providers monopolized access to auto sales and service data in software used by auto dealerships, that has already yielded a $29.5 million settlement with one defendant. She has also been appointed to the steering committee of In re Google Play Consumer Antitrust Litig., 20-CV-05761 (N.D. Cal.), a consolidated class action lawsuit alleging Google antitrust violations.

Leadership Roles

The Antitrust Practice Group continues to act in a number of significant and ongoing antitrust class actions, including In re Liquid Aluminum Sulfate Antitrust Litigation, in which the Firm holds a court-appointed Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee position in a case alleging artificial price inflation by manufacturers of a chemical essential to municipal water treatment, In re Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation, a class action alleging that contact lens manufacturers conspired to maintain artificially high prices for disposable contact lenses, and In Re: Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Antitrust Litigation, a class action alleging an international conspiracy to keep prices for CRT displays artificially high.

Milberg has also played a significant role in other antitrust class action cases, including serving as Co-Lead Counsel in Blessing v. Sirius XM Radio Inc., a case alleging that the merger of two U.S. satellite radio providers led to the monopolization of the satellite radio market and the elimination of competition. The Firm achieved a settlement for the class valued at $180 million. We also served as Co-Lead Counsel in Sandhaus v. Bayer AG, alleging that Bayer and several generic drug manufacturers entered into pay-for-delay agreements concerning an antibiotic marketed by Bayer which caused the plaintiffs to continue paying supra-competitive prices for the drug throughout the class period.

We secured the largest consumer recovery from a pay-for-delay case in Kansas: a $9 million settlement. The Firm also served as Co-Lead Counsel for indirect purchaser plaintiffs in In re Fresh Process Potatoes Antitrust Litigation, a class action alleging that potato growers, their cooperatives, processors, and packers violated federal antitrust laws by conspiring to manipulate the price and supply of potatoes. Milberg settled the case for $5.5 million, plus important injunctive relief.

The Firm will continue working aggressively to vindicate the rights of plaintiffs victimized by antitrust violations and hold companies that engage in anticompetitive behavior accountable.

Focus Areas of Practice:
• Price-fixing
• Market division and customer allocation
• Monopolization and monopoly leveraging
• Illegal tying or bundling of products and services
• Exclusive dealing and refusals to deal