Pillsbury Attorneys Discuss Overlapping Antitrust Laws

In an article written by partner Jacob Sorensen and associate Lindsay Lutz, both with Pillsbury’s litigation group in San Francisco, they discuss antitrust laws and price-fixing. According to Sorensen and Lutz, it is widely accepted that price-fixing should be punished and those who are harmed by it should be able to recover their damages.

The Sherman Act allows a successful plaintiff in a price-fixing case to recover three times the damages they actually suffered. This arguably provides the plaintiff with a bonus, but highly encourages private enforcement of the law.

Sorensen and Lutz discuss the system has developed in such a way that has caused both the punishments and bonuses to grow exponentially. In particular, two factors are creating these issues. The first is the development of overlapping federal and state antitrust laws. The second is the evolution of global commerce to a system often involving long distribution chains in which products are bought and sold multiple times before reaching consumers.