Susman Godfrey L.L.P. Attorneys at Law

Susman Godfrey is one of the preeminent firms in the country in antitrust litigation.

Susman Godfrey has not only represented plaintiffs, our experience in plaintiffs' actions has given us a unique advantage in representing defendants in antitrust actions also. We have successfully represented Aetna (conspiracy to restrain trade), Northwest Airlines (price-fixing), Steve & Sons (price-fixing), Intel (monopolization), Picker International (a defense verdict in a jury trial charging tying), Little Caesars (tying), Medtronic, Inc. (raiding), and ACE Limited (market allocation) in a variety of antitrust matters.

Susman Godfrey represents clients in antitrust cases across the United States. We have handled antitrust cases in Anchorage, Detroit, Reno, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Orange County, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Houston, and Kansas City, as well as numerous cities in Texas. Our partners have served on the Council of the ABA Antitrust Section, the Texas Bar Antitrust Section, the Washington State Bar Antitrust and Consumer Protection Section, and the Executive Committee of the Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law Section of the State Bar of California. They regularly publish and lecture around the country on antitrust subjects.

Example Cases

Susman Godfrey is one of two co-lead counsel in an antitrust class action on behalf of a class of current and former football and basketball players at Division I schools. The case challenged the "GIA cap," an NCAA rule under which the NCAA limits the amount of athletics-based financial aid member schools may provide to amounts that do not cover the full cost of attending school, as a violation of Section I of the Sherman Act. The case raised novel issues because no one had previously successfully prosecuted an antitrust claim against the NCAA on behalf of current or former student athletes. After defeating a motion to dismiss, obtaining class certification, and obtaining helpful deposition testimony from current and former NCAA presidents and high-profile coaches and athletic directors, and with the case set for trial in two months, we were able to negotiate a settlement in late 2007 that provides substantial benefits to current and former student athletes.

Under the settlement, which was approved by the court on August 5, 2008, the NCAA will make $218 million over five years available for schools to provide additional benefits to student athletes, create a $10 million fund to provide educational and professional benefits to former student athletes, and modify its rules to allow schools to provide student-athletes with comprehensive year-round health insurance under the schools' health insurance plans. The settlement was obtained after months of negotiations before the Hon. Daniel Weinstein, one of the nation's leading mediators. The NCAA was represented by David Balabanian at Bingham McCutcheon and Greg Curtner at Miller Canfield, and the Susman Godfrey team included Marc Seltzer, Steve Morrissey, Steven Sklaver, Tibor Nagy, and Amy Brantly.
On September 7, 2007, Susman Godfrey, as one of three co-lead counsel for the class, entered into a settlement agreement with Sprint Corporation. Susman Godfrey represented long-distance telephone subscribers in a class action lawsuit alleging that Sprint, AT&T, and MCI/WorldCom illegally fixed prices. Judge Lungstrum of the District of Kansas approved the settlement on March 4, 2008 and entered a judgment dismissing Sprint. Sprint Nextel Corp. will pay $30 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing it and AT&T Corp. of overcharging customers for assessments that help pay for subsidized phone services. Under the settlement, qualified business and residential customers will receive prepaid telephone calling cards with a face value of $25 million.
Susman Godfrey represents Tessera Technologies, Inc., which develops and owns a wide range of semiconductor packaging, interconnect and consumer optics technologies, in an antitrust case against Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. and Hynix Semiconductor America, Inc.Tessera alleges that Hynix violated the Cartwright Act by conspiring with the other major DRAM manufacturers to boycott Tessera's proprietary packaging technology as well as the Rambus memory technology known as "RDRAM," to monopolize the market, and to fix prices.Tessera also accuses Hynix of unfair competition and intentional interference with contract and prospective economic relations in violation of California law.The case is pending in the California Superior Court in San Francisco, California.
Susman Godfrey represents airline passengers who allege that Korean Airline and Asiana engaged in a conspiracy to fix the prices of airfares in flights to and from Korea.The litigation involves more than 70 class action cases which have been transferred to the Central District of California by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.In February 2008, the Court appointed Susman Godfrey as one of plaintiffs' co-lead counsel to represent plaintiffs and the putative class.
Susman Godfrey is co-lead counsel for a class of several million Comcast cable subscribers in the Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas who allege that Comcast conspired with competitors to divide markets by, among other ways, "swapping" subscribers in other areas for subscribers in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, and that Comcast monopolized those markets.The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied Comcast's motions to dismiss and for judgment on the pleadings and certified the Chicago and Philadelphia classes.Comcast's appeals of the class certification issues did not succeed; the Third Circuit denied review.The Court also rejected Comcast's efforts to send the cases to arbitration on a non-class basis.The litigation could result in an award of several billion dollars.
Susman Godfrey is representing start-up mainframe computer company Platform Solutions, Inc. ("PSI") in a major antitrust and intellectual property case against IBM, the dominant player in the multi-billion dollar worldwide mainframe market. PSI alleges that IBM is abusing its monopoly power in that market by tying its mainframe operating systems to its mainframe computer products, and through discriminatory licensing of intellectual property relating to its mainframe products. IBM claims that PSI's product infringes patents relating to IBM's mainframe architecture, and also is asserting copyright and trade secrets claims against PSI.The case is pending in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, and is scheduled for trial in March 2009.
Susman Godfrey represents defendant ACE Limited and several of its subsidiaries in In re Insurance Brokerage Antitrust Litigation.The plaintiffs allege that ACE conspired with brokers and other insurers to allocate property and casualty insurance markets over a ten-year period.In September 2007, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey dismissed plaintiffs' claims in their entirety.The case is now on appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Susman Godfrey is co-lead counsel and represents a class of direct purchasers of vitamin C in a federal price-fixing case against industrial defendants from the Peoples Republic of China.The case, The Ranis Company v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co. et al, is pending in the Eastern District of New York and raises important new issues concerning the Chinese central and provincial governments' roles in the pricing and output decisions of Chinese manufacturers.
Susman Godfrey recently filed several class actions in federal court in Dallas, Texas, alleging that the three major producers of packaged ice in the United States and Canada conspired to fix prices and to allocate markets for packaged ice in the United States.
Susman Godfrey recently filed a case against the major chocolate manufacturers for price-fixing.The case, Chocolate Confectionary Antitrust Litigation, is pending in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
In January 2006, Susman Godfrey settled the multi-million dollar antitrust claims of Chevron Phillips Chemical Company and Chevron Oronite against four international parcel tanker shipping companies. We initiated two separate arbitrations asserting that the parcel tanker shipping companies had violated antitrust laws by conspiring to increase prices and allocate shipping markets and trade lanes, all to the financial detriment of our clients and other chemical companies. Over the course of several months, and before we engaged in any formal discovery, we negotiated separate settlements with all four shipping companies on behalf of both of our clients.The amounts of these eight settlements are confidential.
In September 2005, Susman Godfrey finalized the settlement of an antitrust claim brought by ChoiceParts against General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Daimlyer Chrysler, and OE Connection. The terms of the settlement are confidential. ChoiceParts alleged that the Big 3 automakers conspired to refuse to license parts data to ChoiceParts' revolutionary electronic parts locating service. After a request for injunction was denied, ChoiceParts hired Susman Godfrey to assist in preparing the case for trial.
In April 2005, Susman Godfrey represented Gateway, Inc. in negotiation of an agreement pursuant to which Microsoft will pay Gateway a multi-million dollar settlement over four years; as part of the agreement, Gateway released antitrust claims against Microsoft.
Susman Godfrey was hired by Hollywood's major movie Studios to defend antitrust claims brought by small video rental stores against the Hollywood studios and Blockbuster. We were brought in to try the case after discovery was completed and after summary judgment was briefed. After two weeks of trial in federal court in San Antonio, Judge Edward Prado granted a motion for judgment as a matter of law in favor of the Hollywood studios and Blockbuster.During the trial, the Plaintiffs called a dozen Hollywood studio executives as adverse witnesses, including Sumner Redstone and Michael Eisner. Although the Hollywood studios had separate counsel, Lee Godfrey spoke on behalf of all them -- handling the opening statement, presenting studio witnesses who were called adverse, and cross-examining the plaintiffs and their antitrust expert. The case was brought on behalf of three plaintiffs, whose lawyers represent hundreds of other independent retailers, and hoped to use this case as a test case, after the Court denied plaintiffs' motion for class certification.The Fifth Circuit affirmed the trial court's decision to grant our clients' motion for judgment as a matter of law.A related class action was brought in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles by the same plaintiffs' lawyer who filed the Texas action.Like the trial court in Texas, the California court denied plaintiffs' motion for class certification.The California court also granted summary judgment.Plaintiffs appealed, and Susman Godfrey was retained to argue the appeal on behalf of all of the Hollywood studios.The Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment in favor of the studios on the antitrust claim but reversed it on the California Practices Act claim.
On March 21, 2005, a federal jury in Los Angeles, Californiareached a verdict in favor of our client, Masimo Corporation, against Tyco Health Care Group, LP and its affiliate, Mallinckrodt, Inc. Masimo brought claims under the federal antitrust laws based on Tyco's anticompetitive practices that prevented Masimo from selling its competing pulse oximetry products to hospitals located throughout the United States. After the trial court vacated the damages award and certain liability findings in its ruling on Tyco's post-trial motions, the issue of damages was re-tried at a bench trial, and the trial court entered a judgment in Masimo's favor for $43.5 million, plus attorneys' fees and costs.Both parties have appealed the judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In November 2004, our client, Novell, Inc., obtained a settlement from Microsoft for $536 million, of which $88 million was awarded in attorneys' fees.Susman Godfrey represented Novell in negotiating the settlement of antitrust claims related to Novell's NetWare business. As Novell's general counsel Joseph A. LaSala, Jr., stated, "This is a significant settlement, particularly since we were able to achieve our objectives without filing expensive litigation."
In August 2003, Susman Godfrey obtained a mediated settlement with Microsoft on behalf of former operating system competitor Be, Incorporated. Under the settlement agreement, Be would receive a payment of $23,250,000 from Microsoft after $8,645,000 in attorneys' fees and expenses. All other terms of the settlement remain confidential, and Microsoft did not admit any wrongdoing.Susman Godfrey filed the antitrust suit on behalf of Be, alleging that Microsoft's predatory conduct and exclusive dealing destroyed Be's business.
In August 2003, Susman Godfrey represented plaintiff Duramed in a lawsuit alleging monopolization of the market for estrogen replacement and hormone replacement drugs.Duramed alleged that Wyeth-Ayerst, the maker of market-dominant estrogen replacement and hormone replacement drugs, had violated the Sherman Act and Clayton Act by, among other things, entering into contracts with managed care entities to exclude Duramed's drug Cenestin from managed care formularies. The parties reached a confidential settlement providing favorable terms for Susman Godfrey's client.
In June 2003, Susman Godfrey and its cocounsel Boies Schiller & Flexner and Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll obtained a verdict from a federal jury in Washington D.C. against four defendants, Mitsui & Co. of Japan, Mitsui USA, DCV, Inc. and DuCoa L.P., who were found to have participated in a global conspiracy to allocate world markets and fix the price of vitamin B4 during the ten year period from 1988 to 1998. The 11-member jury unanimously awarded our clients, a class of direct purchasers of vitamin B4, $49.5 million in damages, for a total award of over $150 million after trebling and attorneys' fees.
Susman Godfrey represented defendant Clear Channel Communications, Inc. in a suit brought by Spanish Broadcasting Corporation, Inc. ("SBS") in June 2002 in the Southern District of Florida.SBS alleged $1.5 billion in damages from supposed anticompetitive conduct by Clear Channel and another defendant.On behalf of Clear Channel, Susman Godfrey filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in its entirety, arguing that the allegations were legally insufficient. On January 31, 2003, after argument by Steve Susman, the Court dismissed each of SBS' antitrust claims against Clear Channel with prejudice.SBS appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which affirmed the dismissal in favor of Clear Channel.
In January 2000, Susman Godfrey settled our client Caldera Inc.'s multi-hundred million dollar monopolization case against Microsoft Corporation. Our massive discovery efforts included taking the depositions of such top Microsoft executives as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. We defeated Microsoft's repeated summary judgment motions and settled the case just two weeks before trial. The amount of the settlement is confidential.

*Results obtained depend on the facts of each case. Every case is different. Similar results may not be obtained in your case. Nothing on this web page is intended to represent that Susman Godfrey currently represents any particular clients mentioned because matters and client relationships naturally terminate from time to time.