Duane Morris Antitrust Class Action Review – 2024

4. Rulings On Changes To Multi-District Litigation, Baseball ’ s Antitrust Exemption, The Right-To-Repair, And Pricing Algorithms Several additional factors saw development over the past year in the antitrust class action space. On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed into law H.R. 2617, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. Among other changes to the federal antitrust laws, it expands the exemption to avoid the consolidation of federal antitrust cases brought by states into one federal court by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML). Before the new law was enacted, civil antitrust actions in multiple districts could be “transferred to any district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings” under 28 U.S.C. § 1407(a). The transfer could be initiated by the JPML or by any party, and in effect, state attorney general antitrust litigation was often consolidated with private class action litigation in the venue of the JPML. Under the new law, the procedure for transferring and consolidating multidistrict antitrust litigation no longer applies where a state is a plaintiff. One of the first antitrust class actions to utilize this new law was In Re Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97735 (S.D.N.Y. June 5, 2023). In that case, a group of 16 U.S. states and Puerto Rico filed an antitrust class action alleging that the defendant established a monopoly over the technology used to display ads on third-party websites. The litigation was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, but was transferred to the Southern District of New York for centralized pretrial proceedings in multi-district litigation. After new § 1407(g) of the Consolidated Appropriations Act was enacted to exempt state antitrust enforcement actions arising under federal antitrust law from MDLs, the plaintiffs moved for an order remanding the action to the Eastern District of Texas on the grounds that the legislation applied to their action. Id. at *1. The plaintiffs contended that the amendment applied to all pending state antitrust enforcement actions, including previously centralized actions because the amendment was a procedural rule that would not have retroactive effect on the conduct of the parties. Id. at *2. The defendant argued that the § 1407(g) amendment did not apply to actions centralized before its enactment. The JPML agreed with the plaintiffs, and remanded the case to the Eastern District of Texas on the basis that the recent amendment to § 1407(g) applied to pending state antitrust enforcement actions. Id. at *3-4. It is likely that several other antitrust class actions involving claims from state attorneys general will similarly utilize this new law. As to legal issues on the baseball diamond, a court examined an antitrust class action brought by a group of Minor League Baseball teams who sued Major League Baseball, alleging that a reorganization of the minor leagues in 2020 that effectively eliminated the plaintiffs’ affiliations with Major League teams constituted a “contract, combination, . . . or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States,” in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In Nostalgic Partners, LLC, et al. v. Office Of The Commissioner Of Baseball, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 15258 (2d. Cir. June 20, 2023), the district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, and the Second Circuit affirmed based on the U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs , 259 U.S. 200, 208-09 (1922), holding that exhibitions of baseball did not implicate the Sherman Act because they did not involve interstate trade or commerce. Id. In President Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition, the White House specifically endorsed a focus on making it easier and cheaper to repair products by limiting manufacturers’ control over the repair and service of those products. In October 2023, the White House convened a roundtable of federal and state officials and private sector stakeholders to discuss consumers’ right to repair. Against this backdrop, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued an important ruling that denied John Deere’s preemptive motion to dismiss a proposed class action. In the lawsuit captioned In Re Deere & Company Repair Service Antitrust Litigation , No. 22-CV-5018, MDL No. 3030 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 27, 2023), the

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