Jarod Bona

Author: Steven Cernak Some of us have been asserting for years that Robinson Patman, the federal price-discrimination antitrust law, is merely “forgotten but not gone.”  That is, while there has been no FTC enforcement in decades, a few private lawsuits are filed every year and careful potential defendants still follow Robison Patman compliance programs. Recent statements suggesting…

Author: Jarod Bona Do you or your competitor have a monopoly in a particular market? If so, your conduct or their conduct might enter Sherman Act, Section 2 territory, which we call monopolization. If you are in Europe or other jurisdictions outside of the United States, instead of monopoly, people might label the company with extreme market power as “dominant.”…

The residential real estate industry is attracting unprecedented scrutiny from government enforcers and private plaintiffs, with one jury in Missouri awarding a class of home seller plaintiffs a staggering $1.8 billion for a price-fixing scheme the jury found was sanctioned by the National Association of Realtors (“NAR”). The onslaught of litigations and investigations will likely…

Author: Aaron Gott There are a lot of lessons you can learn from Wonka. It’s a story about how ingenuity, determination, selflessness, and teamwork can overcome the oppressive adversity of a system that serves entrenched interests. But it’s also a story about a chocolate cartel. And that offers its own lessons, too. Just ask my…

There are a lot of lessons you can learn from Wonka. It’s a story about how ingenuity, determination, selflessness, and teamwork can overcome the oppressive adversity of a system that serves entrenched interests.

The Eighth Circuit is a federal appellate court that covers federal courts in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Let’s say you just lost a civil lawsuit in one of the federal district courts in the Eighth Circuit. You may consider challenging that loss through an appeal. There, a panel of three…

Over the past several decades State Attorneys General have become increasingly involved in merger reviews in tandem with the Federal Trade Commission and/or the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (the Regulatory Agencies). This increase in state merger reviews has been in parallel with states raising their merger and non-merger profile and general antitrust enforcement…

Authors: Steve Cernak & Molly Donovan There is no guaranteed safety zone for exchanging competitively sensitive information amongst competitors. Practices once deemed relatively safe—like subscribing to a third-party data services provider to manage the exchange—now carry increased risks. This is mostly because machine learning and AI have made it possible to predict a specific competitor’s future strategies even…

When allegations of industry-wide price fixing or other cartel conduct come to light, plaintiffs’ lawyers almost always respond with class-action lawsuits, naming all the relevant competitors as co-defendants. Often the defendants comprise all or most sellers of the at-issue product across an entire industry, plus parents and subsidiaries, both domestic and foreign, even if there are…

On December 15, 2023, the Fifth Circuit remanded to the FTC its order requiring Illumina to divest its re-acquired subsidiary, Grail. Despite the remand, the opinion is a big win for the FTC. Below, we offer five takeaways for future merging parties and their counsel. Bona Law filed an amicus brief for 34 Members of…

NBA action is FAN-TASTIC! Unless, of course, the action is one brought by the Department of Justice in a different kind of court. But that may be exactly where the NBA finds itself: the DOJ is reportedly investigating the professional basketball association for alleged antitrust violations. The NBA’s alleged anticompetitive conduct targeted Big3, a competitive basketball league founded…

Author: Steven Cernak The Department of Justice’s challenge of certain Google actions raises interesting antitrust questions. But during the first week of the trial, the biggest issue seemed to be one aspect of Google’s antitrust compliance program. Some commentators were shocked to discover that Google’s lawyers advised the employees to avoid certain hot-button antitrust terms…