Experts

Last month in In re: Keurig Green Mountain Single-Serve Coffee Antitrust Litigation, the Southern District of New York denied certification to a proposed class of direct purchasers who alleged that Keurig, a manufacturer of branded coffee pods and brewers, violated antitrust laws by allegedly suppressing competition from generic coffee pod manufacturers.  Although the plaintiffs offered statistical evidence suggesting that Keurig’s coffee pod prices were elevated on average, the court held that individual issues of antitrust impact predominated over common questions because Keurig directly negotiated prices with large buyers that might fully offset any increase in average prices.Continue Reading Aggregate Damages Model, List Prices Insufficient to Demonstrate Classwide Antitrust Injury, Says Federal District Court

Expert evidence commonly plays an important role in class certification determinations.  On August 5, the Seventh Circuit addressed this issue, holding that in a proposed antitrust class action, the district court erred in certifying a class when it failed to engage with conflicting expert evidence regarding antitrust impact that could have established lack of predominance.        

The case, Arandell Corp. v. Xcel Energy Inc., — F.4th —, 2025 WL 2218111 (7th Cir. 2025) was a long-running natural gas price fixing case.  Plaintiffs moved to certify a Rule 23(b)(3) class.  They argued that common questions of law or fact predominated, including “whether the class paid higher prices for natural gas[.]”  Id. at *4.  Plaintiffs and defendants had competing experts on the predominance issue as it related to impact.  Id. Continue Reading District Courts Must Address Conflicting Expert Evidence to Certify Antitrust Class Action, Seventh Circuit Rules

Companies in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and other industries continue to face litigation regarding their products’ labeling, including as to whether certain representations on labels are deceptive or misleading.  In the Second Circuit and elsewhere, these lawsuits tend to turn on what an objective “reasonable consumer” would understand the representation at issue to mean, and whether that “reasonable consumer” would likely be misled under the circumstances.  In Bustamante v. KIND, LLC, 2024 WL 1917155 (2d Cir, May 2, 2024), the Second Circuit confirmed how important expert testimony can be to that question, and how efforts to exclude expert testimony can ultimately be the difference between winning and losing. Continue Reading A Closer Look: The Importance of Expert Testimony for “Reasonable Consumer” Claims