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Judge Sotomayor and Antitrust

By David Fischer

During her tenure on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has been involved in a several antitrust decisions.

Her most famous antitrust case is certainly Clarett v. Nat’l Football League, 369 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2004) in which she upheld the NFL’s eligibility rules that require a prospective player to wait at least three full football seasons after his high school graduation to be eligible for the player draft.  She so ruled because the rules are immune from antitrust scrutiny under the non-statutory labor exemption.

She wrote the decision affirming the district court’s certification of a class challenging credit card associations’ rules requiring acceptance of their debit cards if any merchant accepts their credit cards.  In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, 280 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2001). 

She wrote a decision reversing the district’s court’s dismissal of a class action alleging that a company and its competitors allegedly shared information on compensation to nonunion managerial, professional, and technical employees and used this information in setting salaries at an artificially low level.  Todd v. Exxon Corp., 275 F.3d 191 (2nd Cir. 2001).

She wrote the opinion in Information Resources, Inc. v. Dun and Bradstreet Corp., 294 F.3d 447 (2d Cir. 2002).  While the case might appear to concern just standing, it touches upon antitrust issues as the question involved, in part, whether the plaintiff lacked standing to sue for injuries suffered in foreign markets if the alleged injury was actually suffered by its subsidiaries and joint ventures.

She wrote an opinion in a Robinson-Patman Act price discrimination case.  Innomed Labs, LLC v. ALZA Corp., 368 F.3d 148 (2d Cir. 2004).  She found that the trial court was wrong to instruct the jury that RPA “would not apply to the Distribution Agreement if the jury determined that the agreement was primarily a contract for the right to distribute a patented product” but that such an error did not warrant a new trial.

These are the only antitrust opinions authored by Judge Sotomayor that I could find.  If you know of any others, email us or leave it in the comments.

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).