Applied Antitrust:
Case Development and Litigation Strategy
Dale Collins
NYU School of Law
dale.collins@shearman.com
IN DEVELOPMENT
Last updated May 18, 2012
This site collects materials for a course for exploring the process of raising, defending against, and ultimately resolving antitrust challenges. In the context of contemporary case studies, we will discuss criminal indictments, plea agreements and the DOJ's leniency policy, sufficiency of pleading, presumptions and burdens of proof, rules of evidence (including the use of expert evidence), dispositive pretrial motions, class actions and class action settlement strategies, temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, laches and the statute of limitations, treble damage judgments, interlocutory and final appeals, and Supreme Court review.
The principal materials for the most part are presented in full text. Everything in them is fair game. The materials were chosen variously for their currency, fact patterns, treatment of precedent, procedural posture, evidentiary questions, and, occasionally, the errors they contain. Unlike the typical antitrust course, the principal cases are not chosen for their precedential significance. While some of these cases will become major precedents, many will not.
An introductory antitrust course is a prerequisite. There will be no exam, but a paper will be required. I am developing a page with some suggestions for paper topics that should give you a feel for what I have in mind. While you may develop one of them into a paper, you are entirely free—indeed, encouraged—to explore a topic on your own that interests you. You can write on anything provided that (1) the paper addresses a procedural antitrust question or a substantive antitrust question in a procedural context, and (2) we agree on the specific question(s) the paper will address.
This web site contains the required reading, the supplemental reading, and various reference materials. There will be about two hours of reading for each hour of class. You will get the most out of class if you are generally familiar with the required reading (i.e., read it once with some care but do not obsess over it—this is a critical skill in the practice of law).
This web site contains more than enough materials for a one semester four-credit class. Whatever the class, some of the materials will have to be eliminated. We will do that opportunistically as we proceed, depending on what is going on in the antitrust world and the interests of the class.
The basic two-credit course covers price fixing and horizontal mergers. This allows for good treatment of the strategies and tools in the criminal, civil, and administrative sides of antitrust law. What is missing, of course, is the application in other areas of antitrust law.
The site includes a list of basic reference materials in antitrust law, economics, and policy, including some readings on the design of antitrust regimes and the history of antitrust law. Needless to say, inclusion of secondary materials on this site does not constitute an endorsement of their content, but rather should be taken only as representing a point of view that is worthy of attention in today's antitrust environment.
I am building a case studies index, but that remains very much a work in progress.
Finally, for some short, systematic treatments of various important practical issues in antitrust law, see Antitrust Unpacked, the Shearman & Sterling antitrust blog.
NB: "±" indicates that the hyperlink will take you to another site.