Antitrust
Representative Matters
- In re National Football League’s Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation. Obtained a complete victory for the NFL and its 32 member teams in a class action lawsuit challenging the distribution of the Sunday Ticket subscription package and the NFL’s overall media strategy. Plaintiffs sought over $21 billion in damages post-trebling as well as injunctive relief that would undermine the NFL’s entire broadcast model. The WS team served as lead counsel throughout the nine-year litigation and ultimately obtained judgment as a matter of law after trial. Relying on the WS team’s cross-examinations of Plaintiffs’ experts and WS’s post-trial briefs, Judge Gutierrez excluded the testimony of Plaintiffs’ key expert witnesses as unreliable, resulting in a complete victory for the NFL.
- In re College Athlete NIL Litigation. Negotiated a groundbreaking settlement to a series of antitrust class-action lawsuits brought by hundreds of thousands of current and former student-athletes under the Sherman Act against the NCAA and the Autonomy Five collegiate athletic conferences. Plaintiffs challenged NCAA rules limiting student-athlete compensation and benefits, including rules related to name, image, and likeness (“NIL”), and prohibiting professional-style revenue sharing. The settlement is expected to bring “antitrust peace” for the NCAA for the next decade through several innovative legal mechanisms and release all past damages claims for a fraction of the damages Plaintiffs ultimately could claim.
- Federal Trade Commission v. Microsoft Corporation, et al. Secured a groundbreaking victory for Microsoft in the second-largest merger trial in American history and the biggest involving a technology company over its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Defeated the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop the transaction after a five-day trial that began less than four weeks after the FTC filed its federal court complaint. Directed all aspects of litigation strategy from the time the acquisition was announced in January 2022, positioning the case for a federal court victory on an unprecedented timeline.
- In the Matter of Altria Group, Inc. and JUUL Labs, Inc. Secured an unprecedented FTC dismissal on behalf of Altria following an administrative trial before the FTC over Altria’s minority investment in JUUL Labs. The Chief Administrative Law Judge dismissed the claims in their entirety claims, finding that FTC complaint counsel had failed to prove that Altria and JUUL violated antitrust laws. The FTC subsequently dismissed the proceeding as no longer in the public interest. Currently serves as lead counsel for Altria in in a series of putative class-action lawsuits brought in the Northern District of California by direct purchasers, indirect purchasers, and indirect resellers raising the same allegations as the FTC.
- Kleen Products LLC, et al. v. International Paper, et al. Won summary judgment for Georgia-Pacific LLC (“GP”) in this antitrust class action involving claimed damages of over $10 billion. The win, which was affirmed unanimously on appeal, came just weeks after other defendants had agreed to pay over $350 million in settlement. Benchmark Litigation named the summary judgment ruling one of its “National Impact Cases” of the year, and the American Lawyer gave the team a “Shout Out” for the win, highlighting the favorable result as “why you hire Beth Wilkinson.” On appeal, the Seventh Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court’s decision.
- In re National Collegiate Athletic Association Athletic Grant-In-Aid Cap Antitrust Litigation. Served as lead counsel for the NCAA at summary judgment and trial in a challenge by certain current and former NCAA college football and basketball student athletes to NCAA rules limiting the level of athletics-based financial aid benefits that student athletes may receive. Plaintiffs set out to fundamentally change college athletics in America by attacking their defining characteristic – that student athletes are amateurs – making this one of the most important cases in the NCAA’s history. After a three-week bench trial, the district court enjoined certain limitations on benefits that student-athletes may receive, but reaffirmed the procompetitive value of the NCAA’s rules and rejected Plaintiffs’ broader-ranging efforts to transform college athletics.
- In re Cattle and Beef Antitrust Litigation. Represents Cargill in multidistrict litigation concerning the cattle and beef industries in the United States. The MDL includes six putative classes of plaintiffs, as well as direct action, opt-out lawsuits by dozens of companies. The various complaints allege violations of the Sherman Act, the Packers and Stockyards Act, and the Commodity Exchange Act, and dozens of state antitrust and consumer protections. Plaintiffs’ antitrust claims allege that the country’s four largest beef packers have colluded to limit slaughter capacity, thus increasing beef prices, the margins those packers earn on beef sales, and the prices of live cattle futures and options contracts. Wilkinson Stekloff leads all aspects of the litigation for Cargill.
- United States v. Glenmark Pharmaceuticals USA. Defended generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Glenmark against criminal antitrust charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. Nearly three years after indictment, the case resolved with a deferred prosecution agreement and no conviction.
- In re Namenda Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litigation. Served as lead counsel for Forest Laboratories and Actavis (now Allergan) in a certified antitrust class action in the Southern District of New York involving a groundbreaking treatment for dementia in Alzheimer’s patients. Plaintiffs claimed that Forest made an anticompetitive “reverse payment” to settle a generic drug manufacturer’s challenge to Namenda, and that Forest unlawfully tried to effectuate a “hard switch” between a twice-daily and once-daily version of Namenda. Plaintiffs claimed approximately $21 billion in trebled damages; the case settled the night before trial for less than 5% of that amount.