Private Enforcement in the US: An overview of leading cases

Historically, those supporting strong antitrust enforcement have tended to agree with observations by the Supreme Court, made principally in the 1970s, that class actions play a vitally important role in antitrust enforcement. [1] Indeed, when the bipartisan Antitrust Modernization Commission made its formal findings as recently as 2007, it identified “the U.S. class action mechanism” as one of two factors (along with “treble damages plus costs and attorneys’ fees”) to which “the vitality of private antitrust enforcement . . . is largely attributable.” [2] However, to the extent class actions have been like apple pie to the American antitrust enforcement scene since the advent of modern class action practice in 1937, 2012-13 may prove to be the start of a counterpart to “the day the music