Corporate Antitrust Affirmative Recovery and Private Damages Actions
Competition is critical to innovation and fair pricing. When competitors collude or dominant firms behave anti-competitively, markets don’t work and businesses and consumers suffer.
The amounts at stake for large corporations that are victims of price fixing and other antitrust infringements are often staggering – these claims are valuable corporate assets. It is our job to help our corporate clients recover what cartels and monopolists have taken from them.
Clients who seek recovery of antitrust damages generally have substantial flexibility in charting a course toward recovery. Antitrust victims’ interests are not limited to the retrospective recovery of damages already suffered; there is also the prospective interest in improving business terms with suppliers and service providers going forward. By taking steps to protect their legal interests, our clients stand not only to recover substantial financial losses, they can also avoid future losses and discourage cartel behavior for years to come.
Most of the antitrust cases that involve damages on a scale warranting private damages actions begin with public enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice, the European Commission, or other competition authority; these public actions form the basis for private actions by antitrust infringement victims. The official imprimatur of a DOJ or Commission decision, for example, has led an increasing number of major corporations to pursue antitrust damage recovery actions in recent years.
The vast increase in the number of antitrust affirmative recovery efforts by major corporations (e.g., telecoms, airlines, big box and internet retailers) underscores the need to pursue these kinds of claims or risk ceding a competitive advantage to rivals. It is now expected that in virtually every major antitrust matter, large corporate plaintiffs will assert their right to recover their damages.
With decades of experience, our attorneys have played leading roles in groundbreaking antitrust litigation and continue to be at the forefront of some of the most important antitrust recovery matters of the day.
As a pure-play antitrust affirmative recovery practice, we are able to focus on our corporate clients’ damage recovery needs and opportunities unencumbered by the business conflicts that typically limit larger firms.
