Antitrust Watch

Sherman Act

Court Awards $3M Sanction and Adverse Inference for Spoliation in Antitrust Case

Wendy Butler CurtisPosted on July 22, 2016

On July 6, 2016, Judge Leonard P. Stark, of the federal district court in Delaware, ordered a $3 million punitive monetary sanction, and an adverse inference jury instruction, against antitrust defendant Plantronics after finding that a top executive at the company had deleted thousands of potentially relevant emails. This case is noteworthy both because of the severity of the sanction and the court’s decision to impute the conduct of an employee to the company even though numerous preservation practices were in place and the employee was instructed not to destroy information.

Antitrust Implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision in RJR Nabisco v. European Community

Robert ReznickPosted on June 23, 2016

For the past several years, plaintiffs and defendants in international price-fixing cases have battled over the extraterritorial application of the Sherman Act in light of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (“FTAIA”), 15 U.S.C. § 6a, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s seminal decision in F. Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd. v. Empagran, S.A., 542 U.S. 155 (2004). Although the Supreme Court passed on an opportunity to clarify the scope of the FTAIA when it denied petitions for certiorari following decisions in Hsuing v. United States, 778 F.3d 738 (9th Cir. 2014), as amended (Jan. 30, 2015), and Motorola Mobility LLC v. AU Optronics Corp., 775 F.3d 816 (7th Cir. 2014), as amended (Jan. 12, 2015),[1] the Court’s decision in RJR Nabisco v. European Community—which addresses the extraterritorial application of the federal RICO statute—may provide some insight into how it views antitrust claims based on foreign injuries under the FTAIA.