Antitrust

Lieff Cabraser is at the forefront of innovative and landmark cases promoting fair competition in the marketplace. We assist companies, governments, and consumers affected by anticompetitive conduct by assessing market circumstances and advising whether and how to pursue legal action.

Academic Journal Publishers Antitrust Litigation
Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law have filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against six commercial publishers of academic journals, including Elsevier B.V. and John Wiley & Sons, on behalf of scientists and scholars who allege that these six world’s-largest for-profit publishers of peer-reviewed scholarly journals conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars.

California Bail Bonds Antitrust Litigation
Lieff Cabraser, together with Justice Catalyst, the National Consumer Law Center, Public Counsel, and Towards Justice, represent plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit alleging that the prices of bail bonds in California have been unlawfully inflated by a price-fixing conspiracy. The suit alleged that “sureties”—the companies that back the bonds sold by retail bond agents—have orchestrated a default price of 10% of the bond amount, and have then worked to eliminate discounting that would otherwise have occurred if the market operated competitively. This first-of-its-kind case challenges the alleged conspiracy among sureties and bail agents to inflate bail bond prices.

TFT-LCDs Antitrust Litigation
Lieff Cabraser served as Court-appointed Co-Lead Counsel for direct purchasers in litigation against the world’s leading manufacturers of Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays. TFT-LCDs are used in flat-panel televisions as well as computer monitors, laptop computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and other devices. Plaintiffs charged that defendants conspired to raise and fix the prices of TFT-LCD panels and certain products containing those panels for over a decade, resulting in overcharges to purchasers of those panels and products.

Over the course of the litigation, the classes reached settlements with all defendants except Toshiba. The case against Toshiba proceeded to trial. In July 2012, the jury found that Toshiba participated in the price-fixing conspiracy. The case was subsequently settled, bringing the total settlements in the litigation to over $470 million. For his outstanding work in the precedent-setting litigation, California Lawyer recognized Richard M. Heimann with a 2013 California Lawyer of the Year award.

T-Mobile / Sprint Merger Antitrust Litigation
In June 2022, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel filed a federal class action complaint against Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, and Softbank Group challenging the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, a merger that reduced the overall number of mobile carriers in the U.S. from four to three and thereby removed all meaningful incentives for competition between the three remaining behemoths: the new T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. As a result, small businesses and consumers in the United States who subscribe to national retail mobile wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon customers, have paid and continue to pay billions more for wireless service than they would have.

The lawsuit seeks the restoration of competition in one of the world’s largest and most concentrated markets. Every consumer and small business in the U.S. market is paying the price of this monstrously anticompetitive merger, including AT&T and Verizon customers who no longer face any pricing challenges from the former mavericks of the telecom space.

Our antitrust group pioneered the expansion of antitrust litigation into anti-competitive behavior by high-tech giants, national and international corporations, and dominant franchise operations all working illegally to suppress the pay, mobility, and opportunities of their employees.

We spearheaded and continue to prosecute a series of anti-competition “no-poach” antitrust lawsuits on behalf of employees at universities, medical schools, high-tech companies, hospitals, fast-food franchises, railway systems, as well as other industries. In March of 2024 in a significant win for employees, our case against McDonald’s fast food restaurants on behalf of employees whose movement and advancement were allegedly illegally restricted was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and is moving on to trial.

Surgical Care Affiliates Employee Illegal No-Poach Agreements
Lieff Cabraser partner Dean M. Harvey serves as Court-appointed Co-Lead Counsel for Plaintiffs in a consolidated federal class action lawsuit against Surgical Care Affiliates for violations of U.S. antitrust laws. The suit, consolidated in federal court in Illinois in July of 2021, alleges that employee compensation and mobility were criminally suppressed at Surgical Care Affiliates via illegal agreements between SCA and its competitors not to compete for each other’s senior employees.

High Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation
Lieff Cabraser served as Co-Lead Counsel for plaintiffs in a class action charging Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar in a widespread conspiracy to suppress the pay of over 60,000 technical, creative, and other salaried employees. In September 2015, a $415 million settlement of the action with Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe was approved. With an earlier $20 million Pixar, Intuit, and Lucasfilm settlement, this recovery constitutes the largest in history of employment-setting antitrust claims.

U.S. Anesthesia Partners, Inc. Antitrust Litigation
Lieff Cabraser represents plaintiffs in a class action alleging that U.S. Anesthesia Partners, Inc. monopolized the commercially reimbursed hospital-only anesthesia market in Texas. Between 2012 and 2019, USAP acquired sixteen anesthesia practices across Texas as a part of an “aggressive ‘buy and build’ consolidation strategy.” Through those acquisitions, USAP obtained more than 50% of the Texas market. USAP transformed its growing market share and foothold in multiple geographies across Texas into profits. After each acquisition, USAP raised reimbursement rates above competitive levels. As a result, Texas healthcare payors have been illegally overcharged for anesthesia services since 2012.

This class action parallels the Federal Trade Commission’s civil lawsuit against USAP, which alleges that USAP monopolized the commercially reimbursed hospital-only anesthesia market in Texas.

Respimat
Lieff Cabraser represents health funds and a proposed class of end payors in an antitrust class action alleging that drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim monopolized the ipratropium-albuterol and tiotropium inhalation spray markets. Commonly known as Combivent Respimat and Spiriva Respimat, the FDA approved these inhaler drugs in 2011 and 2014 respectively to treat COPD and asthma in adults and children. The active ingredients themselves, however, are decades old, and the patents have expired. To block competition by generic drug manufacturers, Boehringer switched the old drugs into new packaging–the Respimat inhaler–and manipulated the U.S. regulatory scheme by listing twenty-five device-only patents in the FDA’s Orange Book, thereby ensuring its prolonged exclusivity over the drugs. The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief to open the markets and damages for purchases of Combivent Respimat and Spiriva Respimat.

Cipro Cases I and II
Lieff Cabraser represented California consumers and third party payors in a class action lawsuit filed in California state court charging that Bayer Corporation, Barr Laboratories, and other generic prescription drug manufacturers conspired to restrain competition in the sale of Bayer’s blockbuster antibiotic drug Ciprofloxacin, sold as Cipro. Between 1997 and 2003, Bayer paid its would-be generic drug competitors nearly $400 million to refrain from selling more affordable versions of Cipro. As a result, consumers were forced to pay inflated prices for the drug — frequently prescribed to treat urinary tract, prostate, abdominal, and other infections.

The trial court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment, which the California Court of Appeal affirmed in October 2011. Plaintiffs sought review before the California Supreme Court. Following briefing, the case was stayed pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in FTC v. Actavis. After the U.S. Supreme Court in Actavis overturned lower federal court precedent that pay-for-delay deals in the pharmaceutical industry are generally legal, plaintiffs and Bayer entered into settlement negotiations. In November 2013, the Trial Court approved a $74 million settlement with Bayer.

On May 7, 2015, the California Supreme Court reversed the grant of summary judgment to Defendants and resoundingly endorsed the rights of consumers to challenge pharmaceutical pay-for-delay settlements under California competition law. Working to the brink of trial, the plaintiffs reached additional settlements with the remaining defendants, bringing the total recovery to $399 million (exceeding plaintiffs’ damages estimate by approximately $68 million), a result the trial court described as “extraordinary.” The trial court granted final approval on April 21, 2017, adding that it was “not aware of any case” that “has taken roughly 17 years,” where, net of fees, end-payor “claimants will get basically 100 cents on the dollar[.]”

In 2017, the American Antitrust Institute honored Lieff Cabraser’s Cipro team with its Outstanding Private Practice Antitrust Achievement Award for their extraordinary work on the Cipro price-fixing and exclusionary drug-pricing agreements case. In addition, their work on the Cipro case led Lieff Cabraser partners Eric B. Fastiff, Brendan P. Glackin, and Dean M. Harvey to recognition by California Lawyer and the Daily Journal with a 2016 California Lawyer of the Year Award.