Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has been representing clients in antitrust/competition matters for much of the last century.  The Firm was founded in 1890, the same year that Congress passed the Sherman Act.  Antitrust became a significant part of the Firm's practice more than fifty years ago and has remained an active practice area ever since.  Over the past five years, the Firm's lawyers and paralegals have averaged more than 140,000 hours annually on antitrust/competition matters on behalf of hundreds of clients, including leading domestic and international companies.

In 2006, Competition Law 360 ranked Gibson Dunn 4th among United States antitrust/competition practices. Gibson Dunn was the recipient of the U.S. Antitrust Law Firm of the Year Award from Chambers and Partners Global in 2004.  In a profile of Gibson Dunn prepared for its Guide to America's Leading Business Lawyers, Chambers states that Gibson Dunn's antitrust team "continues to make its mark on antitrust law" and reports our clients' appreciation of the Firm's "real knack for keeping bills low without sacrificing quality" and "excellent strategy" on complex cases.  In addition, several of the Firm's attorneys were ranked by Chambers among America's leading antitrust lawyers.

Gibson Dunn's Antitrust/Competition Practice Group numbers over eighty attorneys who regularly practice in the antitrust/competition area.  They are located in our Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Denver, Orange County, Brussels, and Munich offices.  In addition, we draw upon the resources of the Firm's more than 300 litigators, many of whom have experience in antitrust and competition matters.  Our group provides services to clients in virtually every area of antitrust/competition law.  Our practice embraces client counseling; mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances; antitrust/competition compliance; private treble damage and preliminary injunction litigation in federal and state courts, including class actions; cartel investigations, grand jury practice and criminal antitrust/competition litigation; government civil investigations and order modifications and enforcement; appellate representation; international antitrust/competition; intellectual property and high technology matters; administrative and regulatory matters implicating antitrust/competition issues; Lanham Act false advertising matters; unfair and deceptive acts and practices issues under Section 5 of the FTC Act and state consumer protection statutes; and state unfair competition and business tort litigation. The Firm also has substantial expertise in defending class actions outside the antitrust area relevant to various issues that arise in the defense of antitrust/competition class actions.

Some of the public matters on which we are working or have worked in the last five years include:

• Secured dismissal for Flexsys NV for both domestic and foreign clients in an indirect purchaser class action on behalf of tire purchasers who had alleged a price-fixing conspiracy in the rubber chemicals industry.  To date, Gibson Dunn has obtained 13 dismissals for clients who were named as defendants in 20 parallel cases filed in 18 state courts.
• Obtained a significant summary judgment victory on antitrust claims against Nissan North America, after the court had advised the parties that it would not grant summary judgment in Nissan's favor.  This paved the way for further victory on Nissan's intellectual property claims, resulting in a highly favorable settlement.
• Obtained a major success for MCI before the European Court of First Instance.  The Court annulled the decision of the European Commission which blocked the merger between MCI and Sprint, ruling that the Commission lacked jurisdiction.
• Obtained summary judgment for American Airlines in the Antitrust Division's recent monopolization case raising novel predatory pricing issues and successfully defended that dismissal on appeal before the Tenth Circuit.
• Defended Intel in a European Commission investigation involving intellectual property rights and against FTC charges of monopolization, which resulted in a favorable settlement for Intel on the eve of trial.
• Obtained summary judgment for Ticketmaster in connection with an action brought by Tickets.com under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
• Obtained jury verdicts for Hewlett-Packard in trials in California and North Carolina alleging monopolization and other charges involving ink cartridges.
• Obtained summary judgment for American Airlines in a Section 1 conspiracy case alleging major airlines acted in concert to reduce and eliminate commissions paid to travel agents.
• Represented Northrop-Grumman in its acquisitions of Litton and of TRW; Ralston Purina Company in its acquisition by Nestle; Intel in its acquisition of Chips & Technologies and its acquisition of Digital Equipment's semiconductor manufacturing facilities; Star Market in its sale of New England supermarkets to Shaw's; Fidelity National in its acquisition of Chicago Title Insurance; and 3D Systems in its acquisition of DTM Corp.
• Defended International Paper Company, Rail Europe Group, Oji Paper, Nippon Soda, Sempra Energy, Thompson Consumer Electronics and others in federal and state class action antitrust litigation.
• Defended Amazon.com in a Sherman Act case challenging its online hosting agreement with Borders.com.
• Represented Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in the Antitrust Division's international criminal cartel investigation of the vitamins industry and a myriad of follow-on direct and indirect purchaser class actions and opt out litigations in federal and numerous state courts.
• Defended Merrill Lynch in a multi-defendant case alleging a horizontal pricing conspiracy.
• Defended Akzo Nobel Chemicals BV in connection with price-fixing conspiracy claims in federal and state courts.
• Defended, respectively, L.A. Cellular, Shimano, and BMC Software in major antitrust litigation.
• Defended Northrop-Grumman in the Department of Justice's Section 7 lawsuit challenging the proposed Lockheed Martin/Northrop-Grumman merger.
• Represented Unilever in a horizontal price fixing case brought by the New York Attorney General.
• Obtained summary judgment for MiniMed against monopolization and tying claims under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, price discrimination under the Robinson- Patman Act and various unfair competition claims under Louisiana law.
• Represented Sony Music in a Justice Department investigation of the online music business.
• Represented Ingram Micro in an action alleging interference with prospective economic advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair business practices, and various antitrust violations under the Robinson-Patman Act.
• Obtained summary judgment for Columbia Tristar Home Video in a major antitrust action brought by a group of 251 independent video retailers against Viacom, Blockbuster Video, and the major movie studios alleging an illegal conspiracy under California's Cartwright Act, secret payment of unearned discounts under California's Unfair Practices Act ("UPA"), and unfair competition under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code Section 17200 ("UCL").
• Obtained dismissal with prejudice of an action brought by the California Attorney General against Artemis S.A., Artemis Finance S.N.C., Artemis America, Aurora S.A. and Francois Pinault alleging California False Claims Act, Unfair Competition (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200) and RICO claims.
• Represented Schlumberger in its seismic joint venture with Baker Hughes.

Our Antitrust Practitioners

Members of Gibson Dunn's Antitrust/Competition  Practice Group have long occupied leading roles in the antitrust/competition bar and have made major contributions to antitrust jurisprudence and policy.  Examples of these contributions include the following:

• Three of our antitrust lawyers have served as chairs of the Section of Antitrust Law of the American Bar Association: Julian von Kalinowski ('74-'75), Mike Denger ('92-'93), and Jim Loftis ('96-'97).  Two of our lawyers also served as chair (Loftis) and vice chair (Denger) of the ABA Antitrust Section's principal treatise, Antitrust Law Developments (2d ed. 1984), and have continued to contribute to subsequent editions, as have other members of the Practice Group, including Daniel Swanson, Sean Royall, and Jarrett Arp.
• Gary Spratling, Joe Kattan, and Sean Royall have served in senior policy positions at the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division or the Federal Trade Commission.  Peter Alexiadis has been retained as an advisor to the Competition Directorate of the European Commission.  Dan Swanson, Joe Kattan and Peter Alexiadis recently testified regarding antitrust policy in connection with the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission's hearings concerning the relationship of antitrust and intellectual property law and Mike Denger testified at FTC's 2002 Merger Investigation Best Practices Workshop.
• Virtually every law library in the country has a copy of the multi-volume treatise, Antitrust Laws and Trade Regulation, co-authored by the Firm's partners Julian O. von Kalinowski and Peter Sullivan, with contributions by other Gibson Dunn lawyers.  The Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeal have cited this treatise in well over one hundred decisions.  Gibson Dunn lawyers -- including Steve Sletten and Sean Royall -- have also taken the lead in drafting and editing the Desk Edition of the von Kalinowski treatise; and others have contributed to related works such as The World Law of Competition and Antitrust Counseling and Litigation Techniques.
• Gibson Dunn partners have served on the editorial boards of leading antitrust periodicals.  Peter Sullivan served as the general editor of Matthew Bender's Antitrust Report, Sean Royall was the Editorial Chair of Antitrust Law Journal, and Jarrett Arp is an Associate Editor of Antitrust magazine.  In addition, Peter Alexiadis, located in our Brussels office, is the EC Affairs editor of the European Intellectual Property Review, the International Company & Commercial Law Review and the Utilities Law Review.
• Mike Denger also served as co-editor-in-chief of the first edition of the Antitrust Section's three-volume treatise, State Antitrust Practice and Statutes (1990), and was editorial chair of the Section's 1991 treatise on Federal and State Price Discrimination Law.  Dan Swanson is the editorial chair, and Jarrett Arp is a member of the editorial board, for the annual update to the Antitrust Section's two-volume treatise, Competition Laws Outside the United States.
• Our lawyers have been active in the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association, and in the antitrust and competition law committees of the International Bar Association and major state and local bar organizations.
• Many of our antitrust/competition lawyers also have enjoyed a long relationship with the Practising Law Institute ("PLI"), both as regular speakers and program chairs of PLI programs.  For instance, Bob Cooper and Mike Denger have spoken regularly on PLI antitrust programs for over two decades.  Sean Royall also organized and, for several years, co-chaired a PLI program on antitrust litigation.

A number of our partners are listed in all major publications that rank the world's leading competition lawyers.  Three (Denger, Kattan and Loftis) are listed (among fewer than 50 U.S. antitrust lawyers) in Chambers Global "World's Leading Lawyers" (2003); five (Cooper, Denger, Kattan, Loftis and Spratling) are listed (among approximately 100 U.S. attorneys) in the current edition of Law and Business Research's "An International Who's Who of Competition Lawyers," six in Chambers USA "America's Leading Business Lawyers" (Cooper, Denger, Kattan, Loftis, Spratling and Swanson) and seven (Cooper, Denger, Kattan, Loftis, Spratling, Sullivan, and Swanson) are listed in the current editions of Euromoney Legal Group's "Guide to the World's Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers" and Mondaq's "Guide to Leading Competition Attorneys."

Our lawyers also have written and spoken widely on a broad spectrum of antitrust/competition topics on hundreds of occasions around the country, in Europe, and in Asia.  Writing and speaking on a subject provides a vehicle by which to stay current and to gain in-depth knowledge of antitrust law.  It is also a means of providing a public service to the bar and to contribute to the development of antitrust jurisprudence

Additional Information

More detailed information on the Firm's antitrust/competition capabilities, experience and resources by type of antitrust/competition practice (e.g., criminal litigation) and by substantive subject matter (e.g., monopolization) is available. We also have information on our experience in particular industries, recognizing that prior background is frequently of significant benefit in getting up the factual learning curve and in understanding the subtleties of a client's business objectives.

For further information, please contact the Co-Chairs of our Antitrust/Competition  Practice Group or other attorneys in the Group:  Robert E. Cooper, in our Los Angeles office, Michael L. Denger, in our Washington, D.C. office, Gary R. Spratling, in our San Francisco office, Daniel G. Swanson in our Los Angeles office, and M. Sean Royall in our Dallas and Washington, D.C. offices.