The attorneys in our antitrust practice handle lawsuits involving allegations of the following types of illegal activity:

Price Fixing: Price fixing is an agreement among competitors to raise or maintain prices. Price-fixing lawsuits may involve agreements to raise the prices of goods or services, but may also involve agreements between companies to change the terms of warranties, discount programs, shipping fees or financing rates.

Absent direct evidence of collusion, price-fixing lawsuits often involve circumstantial evidence, such as a pattern of unexplained, identical price increases or a change in contract terms without a legitimate business reason for doing so.

Bid Rigging: Coordination among bidders undermines the fairness of the bidding process and is illegal. Through bid rigging, competitors conspire to effectively raise prices in situations where purchasers (often federal, state or local governments) attempt to acquire goods or services by soliciting competing bids.

One of the most common types of bid rigging schemes is complementary bidding, where some competitors agree to submit bids that are either too high to be accepted or contain terms that will not be accepted by the buyer.

These bids are not intended to win the auction, but rather are designed to give the appearance of competitive bidding to make the winning bid seem fair and reasonable. Bid-rigging arrangements may also involve subcontracting part of the main contract to the losing bidders or forming a joint venture to submit a single bid.

Market Division or Customer Allocation: Market division or customer allocation schemes are agreements by competitors on how to divide markets among themselves. Market division antitrust lawsuits often involve competing firms allocating specific customers, products or territories among themselves.

Monopolization: Antitrust laws are created to prevent businesses from creating monopolies that take of the market for a particular product or service. Monopolization occurs when one company deliberately destroys its rivals to obtain “monopoly power” over a particular good or service.

A company has obtained monopoly power if it has the ability to raise prices or reduce supply without fear that a rival can charge lower prices for a substitute good or service. Our antitrust attorneys represent businesses and individuals who have suffered financial harm because of illegal monopolies.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Antitrust law prohibits mergers and acquisitions that substantially decrease competition or create monopolies for certain goods or services. When a merger or acquisition creates a single, huge company that takes over a large share of the market, our antitrust attorneys can challenge the plan by issuing an antitrust lawsuit.

Anticompetitive corporate conduct can have a huge effect on individual customers, as well as the economy as a whole. To discourage companies from colluding and creating illegal monopolies, antitrust law allows courts to award plaintiffs triple the amount of the economic injury caused by the defendant.

For example, if a group of LCD screen manufacturers conspired to raise prices and overcharged customers by $1 billion, a court may require the companies to pay $3 billion to the businesses and individuals who were overcharged. In addition, the court can issue a permanent injunction, ordering the companies to refrain from continuing to engage in anticompetitive business practices.

Our antitrust litigation attorneys provide clients with sound legal guidance, as well as updates on legal trends and regulatory developments. If you are an individual or business owner/manager who has suffered financial harm because of an anticompetitive business practice, get in touch with us today to find out if you can recover compensation through an antitrust lawsuit.