antitrust

In Ohio Carpenters’ Pension Fund v. Deutsche Bank AG, no. 22-cv-10462-ER (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 26, 2024), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed an antitrust class action alleging a conspiracy between Deutsche Bank and Rabobank to manipulate prices of European government bonds.  Plaintiffs, certain U.S.-based pension funds, alleged that the defendants manipulated the prices they offered to investors to buy or sell EGBs in order to widen the resulting “bid-ask spread” between those prices and increase their profits. Continue Reading Post-Class Period Statistics Alone Cannot Demonstrate Parallel Conduct in Antitrust Action, SDNY Holds

In January 2021 Short Squeeze Trading Litigation (No. 22-11873), the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a case brought by retail investors alleging that Robinhood, a zero-fee stock brokerage platform, conspired with Citadel Securities, a high-frequency trading firm and short-seller, to block trading in “meme stocks” like GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and Bed Bath & Beyond.  Although the investors alleged that prices fell in the meme stocks they owned, the court held that those losses were not “anticompetitive effects” arising in the relevant antitrust markets the investors pleaded in their complaint.Continue Reading Game Stopped:  Eleventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Meme Stock Antitrust Lawsuit

On May 8, a Nevada federal court dismissed with prejudice a class action complaint alleging that several Las Vegas hotel operators violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by agreeing to set hotel room prices using pricing algorithms from the same vendor.  The decision, Gibson v. Cendyn Group, No. 2:23-cv-00140 (D. Nev. 2024), follows the court’s October 24, 2023, dismissal of plaintiffs’ original complaint, which rejected plaintiffs’ allegations of a per se unlawful price-fixing conspiracy but granted leave to amend based on a Rule of Reason theory. Continue Reading No Dice:  Nevada Court Dismisses with Prejudice Algorithmic Price Fixing Theories in Vegas Hotels Case

The Northern District of Illinois recently denied certification to several proposed classes of purchasers of a seizure drug called Acthar in City of Rockford v. Mallinckrodt ARD, Inc., No. 3:17-cv-50107, 2024 WL 1363544 (Mar. 29, 2024).  Class plaintiffs had alleged that defendant Express Scripts, a drug distributor, conspired with Mallinckrodt, a drug manufacturer, to raise the price of Acthar through an exclusive distribution arrangement.  In denying certification to the damages classes, the court determined that plaintiffs had not met Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance standard because they lacked a reliable economic model showing that damages were “capable of measurement on a classwide basis,” as required by Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 569 U.S. 27, 34 (2013).Continue Reading Court Denies Class Certification in Antitrust Case Based on Expert’s Reliance on Unsupported Assumptions in Damages Model