We’re presenting two mini symposia this month. The first begins a discussion of the extraordinary costs of antitrust litigation—is antitrust becoming a luxury no one can afford? This collection discusses two key issues—who’s to blame (if anyone) and what we can do about reducing costs. The second symposium looks at some recent global cases from Europe and China that could have wide-ranging effects well beyond the parties and countries directly involved.
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The Escalating Costs of Antitrust Litigation
A Cost-Cutting Solution to the Discovery Burdens of Antitrust Disputes
Rapidly expanding discovery costs now force settlements in situations where, in the past, defendants might make the pragmatic business decision to litigate when they believed they did nothing wrong. James Bo Pearl & J. Hardy Ehlers (O’Melveny & Myers)
Sensible Discovery: Effective Strategies to Streamline the Discovery Process and Save Clients Money
Expertise in managing discovery is not glamorous; discovery motions are certainly not romanticized among the ranks of associates, and clients often do not understand why they are paying thousands of dollars on motions to compel. Robert Corp & Chul Pak (Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati)
Pro-Business and Anti-Efficiency: How Conservative Procedural Innovations Have Made Litigation Slower, More Expensive, and Less Efficient
Contrary to widely propagated but fictitious notions, unlike many corporate defendants and most corporate defense counsel, plaintiffs generally want to get their case before a fact-finder as quickly and inexpensively as possible. J. Douglas Richards & Michael B. Eisenkraft (Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC)
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Far-reaching Global Decisions
Analyzing Competition Among Internet Players: Qihoo 360 v. Tencent
Although Qihoo 360 has appealed the decision to China’s Supreme Court it now stands as both a landmark decision in China and an exemplar of serious antitrust analysis of the internet sector for courts and competition authorities around the world. David S. Evans, Vanessa Yanhua Zhang, & Howard H. Chang (Global Economics Group)
A Bananas Judgment: Denying a Parent Company Access to a Related Company’s Reply to the Statement of Objections
As long as the Court allows the EC to rely on this notion of undertaking but does not extend the same procedural rights as would be given to a legal entity, companies are going to have to find private contractual means to anticipate the unimaginable. Laura Atlee (Steptoe & Johnson LLP)
The Court of Justice’s Judgment in Allianz Hungria is Wrong and Needs Correcting
The Court’s fundamental misunderstanding of how a by object assessment should be conducted creates so much uncertainty that it needs addressing and correcting at the first available opportunity. Patrick Harrison (Sidley Austin LLP)
