Christopher J. Cormier

Purchasers of Kashi food products brought a class action for alleged unfair business practices and false advertising, asserting that advertisements claiming Kashi products contained “nothing artificial” and were “all natural” were false and misleading. Defendants argued that the plaintiffs (...)

Missouri landowners brought a class action asserting that electric companies that had easements over their properties for the transmission of electricity had exceeded the scope of their easements, by also transmitting fiber optic communications through the properties in addition to (...)

Purchasers of Whirlpool washing machines brought a product liability class action against Whirlpool, alleging that a design defect in many of the machines resulted in mold and mildew in the machines and foul odors in their homes. A class was certified as to liability issues, with proof of (...)

In this prominent case, the United States and 33 states and U.S. territories brought civil suits against Apple Inc. and five book publishing companies, alleging that they conspired and acted together, in violation of United States antitrust law, to cause the publishing industry to move from a (...)

Employees at a meat processing facility brought a class action claiming that required sanitary procedures deprived them of the benefit of the break time during which their employer required them to perform those procedures. Class certification was sought in connection with a proposed class (...)

Purchasers of a hairstyling product (“Serum”) from L’Oreal brought a class action, asserting that the product was flammable, that its flammability was not adequately disclosed, and that class members would not have bought the product had they known that it was flammable. On that basis, they (...)

Plaintiff merchants asserted antitrust tying claims against American Express, alleging that its “honor all cards” rule leveraged its monopoly power in the credit card market to force merchants to accept cards with higher interchange fees than they would have paid in the absence of that rule. (...)

Present and former employees of a medical products manufacturer sued under California labor and unfair practice laws for various time calculation practices that allegedly reduced their pay. The district court denied class certification on the basis that damage amounts for each employee would (...)

Grocery store employees brought a class action alleging discrimination based on race and national origin. Defendants argued that there was no predominance of common questions, asserting that the Supreme Court’s Comcast decision precluded a finding of predominance because individual damage (...)

Individual insurance agents brought a class action against their insurance agency employer, asserting that the agency had agreed to pay its agents a commission on certain health insurance plans but had refused to pay them. The court denied class certification, reasoning that under Comcast, (...)

Plaintiff drug purchasers brought suit under federal and state antitrust laws, contending that the defendants had engaged in an unlawful scheme calculated to raise and maintain the prices of the drug Skelaxin through sham litigation, the filing of sham citizen petitions and unlawful horizontal (...)

In re Urethane Antitrust Litig. (D. Kan. May 15, 2013) Like the Whirlpool case discussed above, this is another opinion that interprets the Supreme Court’s Comcast opinion to have little likely effect on class certification in antitrust cases. After a four-week jury trial, defendant Dow (...)

The plaintiffs, a Michigan brew pub and its owner, brought a class action asserting that standard practices of the Michigan Treasury Department, involving issuance of warrants without judicial approval and search and seizure of property without advance notice, involve routine violations of due (...)

Shareholders of a nut processing, marketing and distributing company brought a class action under the federal securities laws, asserting that the company had maintained artificially high share prices by understating the cost of walnuts. Defendants argued that the plaintiff had failed to (...)

Federal Express employees brought a class action against it, claiming that Federal Express failed to pay for all hours worked, including off-the-clock work and unpaid meal and rest breaks. The plaintiffs proposed a method of class-wide proof that would have rested on the premise that “clocking (...)

In a high-technology case, employees of various high-tech companies sued their employers for conspiring to restrict their salaries. 856 F. Supp. 2d at 1108. Many of the plaintiffs’ allegations mirrored those from earlier complaints that the Department of Justice filed against the same firms, (...)

Gasoline consumers in California brought a class action against gas station owners and operators in California, claiming that their failure to adjust gasoline prices based on the effects of temperature on gasoline volume and to disclose those effects was a violation of California’s unfair (...)

Current and former employees of the Applebee’s restaurant stores located in New York brought a class action against Applebee’s based on its failure to adhere to a New York state regulation that required that on each day in which the spread of hours worked exceeds 10, and employee must receive (...)

Plaintiff cable TV subscribers asserted Sherman Act conspiracy and monopolization claims, alleging that certain so-called “clustering transactions” that had the effect of reducing competition for cable television services in the Philadelphia region were agreements in restraint of trade. In (...)

Plaintiff baseball and hockey fans who had purchased television and internet packages for the viewing of baseball and hockey games brought an antitrust class action against the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, regional sportns networks and Comcast and DirecTV, alleging that (...)

This case is not an antitrust case, nonetheless it has enormous precedential importance to class certifications in antitrust cases. Plaintiff securities purchasers brought suit under the federal securities laws, relying in order to establish common impact under Rule 23 on the (...)

Retail grocer plaintiffs asserted antitrust conspiracy claims against wholesale grocers, with each retail grocer suing only the co-conspirator wholesale grocer with which it did not do business directly and with which it therefore had no arbitration agreement. The district court held that the (...)

In this recent decision, the court applied the well-known Daubert standards governing expert testimony admissibility in denying the defendant’s motions to exclude the testimony of the class plaintiffs’ liability expert. (The Court also denied the defendant’s motion to exclude the opinion of (...)

In this opinion, the court clarified the appropriate summary judgment standard to apply to the plaintiffs’ claims of horizontal price-fixing for commodity products, and then ruled on whether the plaintiffs had proffered sufficient evidence to get to trial under that standard. First, the court (...)

One of the most controversial topics in antitrust law and scholarship during the last decade or more has been what legal standards are an appropriate frame of reference for evaluating the lawfulness of so-called “reverse payments,” in which after a would-be generic drug manufacturer brings (...)

In re TFT-LCD (Flat Panel) Antitrust Litig., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145935 (N.D. Cal. 2012) Even though many states have chosen to part company with federal antitrust laws by permitting antitrust standing for so-called "indirect purchasers" under state law — despite the holding of the Supreme (...)

Another topic that has been highly controversial in recent years, at least in certain district courts, has been the standing of overcharged purchasers to bring monopolization claims under the Supreme Court’s decision in Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food Machinery & Chem. Corp., 382 (...)

In determining whether to finally approve a class settlement reached with one defendant, the court considered the objections of several members of the proposed indirect purchaser settlement class regarding class counsel’s decision to forego a monetary distribution to the class and instead make (...)

When class actions in recent years have been brought asserting claims on behalf of indirect purchasers under state laws that have repealed Illinois Brick, defendants have frequently argued that named class representatives lack "standing" to assert claims in a class action under the laws of (...)

ZF Meritor, LLC v. Eaton Corp., 696 F.3d 254 (3d Cir. 2012) In this case, the Third Circuit provided needed clarification on the standard for analyzing the legality of exclusive (or at least essentially exclusive) agreements that dominant firms enter into with their customer base. ZF (...)

Especially in pharmaceutical antitrust class actions, many efforts have been made in recent years to rest cases on Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Indus., Inc., 508 U.S. 49 (1993)("PRE"), which requires that for a claim of so-called "sham litigation" to remove (...)

In this case, the Third Circuit provided needed clarification on the standard for analyzing the legality of exclusive (or at least essentially exclusive) agreements that dominant firms enter into with their customer base. ZF Meritor, the only competitor of Eaton, the dominant supplier of (...)

The Second Circuit was asked to consider whether the plaintiff, a retail consumer of electricity, could maintain an antitrust action against an electricity producer that allegedly agreed with its competitor to increase installed capacity prices and a financial firm that allegedly facilitated (...)

The plaintiffs, who alleged a price-fixing conspiracy between two leading blood reagent producers, moved for class certification. The court began by noting its duty to perform a rigorous analysis and to find by a preponderance of the evidence that each requirement of Rule 23 had been (...)

In this case, the Second Circuit overruled a district court order granting summary judgment to a company accused of horizontal price-fixing. The plaintiffs presented direct evidence of conspiracy in the form of testimony from one of the conspirators who testified that he had reached an (...)

Having failed at obtaining federal standing to sue for damages under one exception to the Illinois Brick rule, the plaintiffs argued in the alternative that they had standing under the “ownership/control” exception to that rule. Again, the court disagreed. 686 F.3d at 756. The court found (...)

The Second Circuit was asked to determine, among other things, whether there was enough evidence for a jury to find that the alleged agreement among competitors to raise prices actually caused the price increases that subsequently occurred. 690 F.3d at 65-66. While the Court conceded that it (...)

In this judgment, the Third Circuit was asked to answer an increasingly common question in antitrust litigation in the medical industry: whether a distributor who purchases a product from a manufacturer, albeit pursuant to prices negotiated by a group purchasing organization at the behest of (...)

In this widely-followed case, consumers of electronic books alleged that the defendants, five of the six biggest publishers and Apple, conspired to raise prices of e-books. The defendants allegedly hatched the conspiracy to stymie the low e-book prices that dominant retailer Amazon was then (...)

In a high-technology case, employees of various high-tech companies sued their employers for conspiring to restrict their salaries. 856 F. Supp. 2d at 1108. Many of the plaintiffs’ allegations mirrored those from earlier complaints that the Department of Justice filed against the same firms, (...)

In this horizontal price-fixing conspiracy case, the defendants argued that the plaintiffs’ complaint failed to adequately plead fraudulent concealment so as to toll the statute of limitations. In particular, the plaintiffs purportedly failed to plead (1) that the conspiracy was (...)

In re Live Concert Antitrust Litig., 863 F. Supp. 2d 966 (C.D. Cal. 2012) This case illustrates the degree to which courts have become fundamentally confused in recent years about "market definition" concepts, with the consequence that cases increasingly are dismissed based on rejection of a (...)

In re Live Concert Antitrust Litig.: 863 F. Supp. 2d 966 (C.D. Cal. 2012) The court rendered decisions on various motions, including a motion to exclude the testimony of the plaintiffs’ damages expert. Two of the main statistical analyses the plaintiffs’ expert employed to estimate damages (...)

This case illustrates the degree to which courts have become fundamentally confused in recent years about "market definition" concepts, with the consequence that cases increasingly are dismissed based on rejection of a plaintiff’s proposed product market definition, and expert analysis of (...)

Even though many states have chosen to part company with federal antitrust laws by permitting antitrust standing for so-called "indirect purchasers" under state law — despite the holding of the Supreme Court in Illlinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720 (1977) that only so-called "direct (...)

In this opinion overturning the district court’s denial of class certification, the Seventh Circuit clarified the standards trial courts should use in evaluating expert testimony submitted in connection with class certification. The plaintiffs filed a motion seeking to exclude the (...)

In this opinion, addressed above with respect to the class certification element of predominance, the Seventh Circuit also clarified the standards trial courts should use in evaluating expert testimony submitted in connection with class certification. The plaintiffs filed a motion seeking to (...)

In this case the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants conspired to reduce the supply of potatoes. 834 F. Supp. 2d at 1148. The conspiracy allegedly began when potato growers formed a cooperative to increase the price of potatoes by agreeing to limit potato planting acreages and by paying (...)

In opposing the plaintiffs’ class certification motion, the defendants chose to attack the plaintiff’s adequacy as a class representative, as opposed to the usual broad-scale challenge to predominance. The defendants argued that the plaintiff was an inadequate class representative primarily (...)

In this case, the Eighth Circuit affirmed a trial court’s rejection of a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission based on rejection of the FTC’s proposed market definition, even in the face of clear evidence that the challenged conduct had in fact led directly to vastly increased prices, (...)

This case involved indirect purchaser claims under various state antitrust laws, arising from allegedly monopolistic conduct by DeBeers that was alleged to have increased diamond prices worldwide. Objections were raised to the settlement, principally on the basis that diversity of available (...)