Last Week in Antitrust Litigation (#018)

Week of July 14, 2025

Top Takeaways

1. Monopsony Allegations Take Center Stage in Labor Market Litigation: The Dorrell case illustrates aggressive enforcement trends targeting information exchange and wage coordination among employers—underscoring the need for antitrust-sensitive HR practices.

2. Antitrust Injury Doctrine Continues to Gatekeep Private Enforcement: Courts in Casey’s Distribution, Vazquez-Ramos, and Lutz reaffirmed that injury to a competitor is not injury to competition—raising strategic hurdles for plaintiffs and shielding certain vertical conduct.

3. Serial Follow-On Filings Amplify Exposure Across Sectors: New complaints mirroring sports memorabilia, real estate, and digital platform theories reflect heightened plaintiff momentum—raising implications for coordination defenses, litigation preparedness, and settlement strategies.

   
   

New Cases Filed

Dorrell v. Constellation Energy Corp. (D. Md. July 7, 2025): Plaintiffs filed a putative class action against several nuclear energy companies and two consulting firms alleging a conspiracy to suppress compensation for nuclear power generation workers in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Plaintiffs allege that defendants exchanged current and future compensation data through a repository of collective bargaining agreements and compensation comparison reports, coordinated wage-setting practices at annual meetings of the Nuclear Human Resources Group, and engaged in direct bilateral communications to align pay strategies. Plaintiffs contend that this conduct allowed defendants—who collectively own and operate all commercial nuclear power plants in the United States—to eliminate competition in the labor market and exert monopsony power to suppress wages below competitive levels nationwide. Plaintiffs seek class certification, treble damages, declaratory and injunctive relief, pre- and post-judgment interest, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

Follow-on cases that were filed include:

• Jones v. Fanatics, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. July 14, 2025) (alleging conspiracy resulting in inflated prices for sports trading cards like in Scaturo v. Fanatics (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 17, 2025))

• Hansen v. Archery Trade Ass'n, Inc. (M.D. Tenn. July 14, 2025) (alleging defendants conspired to fix prices of archery equipment like in Santarlas v. Hoyt Archery, Inc. (D. Utah May 30, 2025))

• Dunkin v. Bowtech, LLC (W.D. Mo. July 15, 2025) (same)

• Simcik v. Archery Trade Ass'n, Inc. (D. Minn. July 16, 2025) (same)

• Butter v. Archery Trade Ass'n, Inc. (W.D. Pa.) (July 17, 2025) (same)

• Robinson v. NCAA (C.D. Cal. July 15, 2025) (alleging NCAA’s eligibility rules are anticompetitive like in Elad v. NCAA (D.N.J. Mar. 20, 2025))

• TikTok Glob. LLC v. ByteDance LTD (S.D. Fl. July 15, 2025) (alleging defendants engaged in anticompetitive conduct to block legitimate bids to acquire TikTok like in TikTok Glob. LLC v. Bytedance LTD. (S.D. Fl. Apr. 3, 2025))

• Northwell Health, Inc. v. Blue Cross Blue Shield Ass'n (E.D. Pa. July 15, 2025) (alleging market allocation and price-fixing in health insurance industry like in CommonSpirit v. Blue Cross (N.D. Ill. Mar. 4, 2025))

  
  

Dispositive Orders and Verdicts

Casey's Distrib., Inc. v. NFL (S.D.N.Y. July 14, 2025): In this case alleging a vertical market allocation and group boycott scheme restricting sales of NFL-licensed merchandise on third-party online marketplaces (“TPOMs”) in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, the court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss without prejudice. The court held that (a) plaintiff’s alleged harm—being excluded from selling NFL-licensed goods on TPOMs—was an injury to a competitor, not to competition, and (b) the alleged injury was not of the type antitrust laws were intended to prevent and the complaint did not allege consumers would pay higher prices due to the alleged scheme, thereby failing to establish antitrust injury and standing.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Vt. v. Teva Pharm. Indus. (D. Vt. July 14, 2025): In this case alleging a monopolistic scheme by Teva to block generic competition in the market for Copaxone, a multiple sclerosis drug, in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, the court denied Teva’s motion for partial judgment on the pleadings. Teva sought judgment on the grounds that: (a) plaintiffs’ claims based on copay assistance, sham petitioning, and product hopping failed to state a claim under antitrust law; and (b) those claims were untimely under applicable federal and state statutes of limitations or laches. The court held that: (a) plaintiffs plausibly alleged that Teva’s copay assistance and Medicare subsidy programs may have insulated Copaxone from price competition, and that its petitioning and product-hop conduct could support antitrust liability under the sham exception and product coercion theories; and (b) although the challenged conduct occurred more than four years before the complaint, plaintiffs adequately pleaded fraudulent concealment and continuing violations to survive a timeliness challenge at the pleading stage, and the court declined to resolve disputed factual issues regarding tolling or laches under Rule 12.

Homie Tech., Inc. v. Nat’l Ass’n of Realtors (D. Utah July 15, 2025): In this case alleging a horizontal conspiracy among national brokerages and the National Association of Realtors to adopt and enforce anticompetitive rules that restrained competition in the residential real estate market in violation of, among others Section 1 of the Sherman Act and the Utah Antitrust Act, the court granted defendants’ motions to dismiss with prejudice. Defendants sought dismissal of the antitrust claims on the grounds that: (a) they were time-barred; and (b) plaintiff failed to plausibly allege antitrust injury. The court found that: (a) all claims accrued more than four years before the complaint and were not revived by any new and independent acts; and (b) Homie failed to allege antitrust injury because it entered and succeeded in the market during the relevant period and benefited from elevated commissions.

Vazquez-Ramos v. Triple-S Salud, Inc. (D.P.R. July 15, 2025): In this case alleging an exclusive dealing arrangement between Triple-S and a rival urology practice to foreclose plaintiffs from providing government health plan urology services in the Western Region of Puerto Rico in violation of, among others, Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and the Puerto Rico antitrust law, the court granted summary judgment in favor of Triple-S and the “Urologics Defendants.” The court held that (a) plaintiffs failed to present evidence of harm to competition—defendants’ exclusive contract resulted from a competitive bidding process, prices and quality of care were not adversely affected, and defendants later attempted to recruit the excluded physicians—so there was no unreasonable restraint under the rule of reason, and (b) plaintiffs lacked antitrust standing because their claimed injury was a loss of business, not a harm to the competitive process, and thus not the type of injury the antitrust laws were designed to prevent.

Lutz v. Homservices of Am., Inc. (S.D. Fl. July 15, 2025): In this case alleging a conspiracy among real estate brokerages to inflate buyer-agent commissions in violation of, among others, Section 1 of the Sherman Act and various state antitrust laws, the court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss. Defendants sought dismissal on the grounds that: (a) plaintiffs lacked antitrust standing to pursue injunctive relief under federal law; (b) the state law claims were untimely; (c) the state law claims were impermissible shotgun pleads; and (d) plaintiffs lacked standing to assert the state law claims. The court held that (a) plaintiffs, as indirect purchasers, were not efficient enforcers of the antitrust laws and overlapping settlements mooted injunctive relief, warranting dismissal of the federal claim with prejudice; and (b) the remaining claims asserted violations of 25+ state statutes without pleading the necessary elements or specifying which acts supported which claims, depriving defendants of fair notice and requiring dismissal without prejudice of the state law counts.

Tekion Corp. v. CDK Glob., LLC (N.D. Cal. July 15, 2025): In this case alleging CDK used its control over dealer data to prevent migrations to rival dealership management systems (DMS) in violation of, among other things, Section 2 of the Sherman Act, the court denied CDK’s motion to dismiss. CDK sought dismissal on the grounds that: (a) Tekion failed to plausibly allege CDK’s monopoly power, (b) CDK’s conduct was not exclusionary or anticompetitive under Section 2, (c) Tekion failed to allege antitrust injury, and (d) any tying allegations were insufficient to state a claim. The court held that: (a) Tekion plausibly alleged monopoly power through CDK’s ~60% market share with high barriers to entry; (b) CDK’s data withholding and legal threats plausibly constituted anticompetitive conduct impeding rivals’ ability to compete on the merits; (c) Tekion sufficiently alleged antitrust injury by showing harm to competition and consumer choice, not merely harm to itself; and (d) plaintiff agreed that no tying claim was asserted.

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If you have any antirust questions or would like more information about any of these matters, please contact one of the following authors:

Christian Lorenz Zach Martin  christian@kressinpowers.com zach@kressinpowers.com

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