The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Trump Adds Antitrust Expert to Justice Transition Team.  A Republican antitrust veteran has been named to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team for the Justice Department, a choice that lawyers say signals a more hands-off approach to antitrust enforcement compared to Democratic President Barack Obama.  David Higbee, a partner at the law firm Hunton & Williams LLP, worked for President George W. Bush’s administration from 2001 to 2005, spending the last year in the Antitrust Division.  While Trump, who campaigned as a populist, has talked tough on media mergers such as AT&T Inc. buying Time Warner Inc., and singled out Amazon.com Inc. for antitrust scrutiny, Higbee’s naming heralds a return to a traditional Republican view of merger enforcement, lawyers said.

Deutsche Bank to Pay $60 Million to Settle U.S. Gold Price-Fixing Case.  Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to pay $60 million to settle private U.S. antitrust litigation by traders and other investors who accused the German bank of conspiring to manipulate gold prices at their expense.  The preliminary settlement was filed on Friday with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and requires a judge’s approval.

Becton Dickinson Wins Reversal of $340 mln Syringe Award.  A federal appeals court on Friday threw out an antitrust verdict that ordered medical device maker Becton Dickinson and Co. to pay rival Retractable Technologies Inc. $340 million in damages over its marketing of safety syringes.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans called Retractable’s claim that Becton violated the Sherman Act by trying to monopolize the U.S. safety syringe market “infirm as a matter of law.”

U.S. Judge Throws Out Kodak, Fujifilm Aluminum Price-Fixing Cases.  A U.S. judge on Wednesday threw out the last vestiges of private litigation over alleged aluminum price-fixing, dismissing lawsuits by Eastman Kodak Co., Fujifilm Holdings Corp., Reynolds Consumer Products and three other plaintiffs.  U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan on Oct. 5 dismissed nationwide litigation in which purchasers accused Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., mining company Glencore Plc and others of conspiring from 2009 to 2012 to boost prices by reducing supply.  Judge Forrest later agreed that the other six plaintiffs were entitled to have their claims considered separately because they had filed their own lawsuits.  But she said those claims must also fail because there was no proof that the defendants engaged in anticompetitive conduct outside the aluminum warehouse services market.