Every story on LexCircuit filed under antitrust: court orders, regulation, ethics opinions, litigation and research, each summarized across its sources.
Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki, who led the Justice Department's Antitrust Division under President Biden, have launched FluxCap, an AI platform for complex litigation that starts with antitrust work. The co-CEOs say the tool reviews documents, conducts research and helps lawyers develop strategy, spot evidence gaps and anticipate opposing arguments. It has raised $6.4 million in seed funding from investors including Y Combinator and Burford Capital.
The Delaware Supreme Court on October 23, 2026 affirmed a Court of Chancery judgment requiring Verisk Analytics to keep pursuing its $2.35 billion acquisition of AccuLynx. Vice Chancellor Bonnie David had held on August 7 that Verisk's termination of the merger agreement was invalid because its own willful conduct was the primary cause of the FTC second request that blocked closing, and ordered specific performance. Verisk said it respects the order and that the deal still needs FTC clearance.
Litigation Capital Management, the AIM-listed dispute funder, said on October 23, 2026 that a funded party has served notice terminating a litigation funding agreement for a collective action before the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, alleging LCM breached the agreement. LCM disputes the termination, has hired lawyers and is weighing options with its capital providers. The funder has A$2.7 million of its own capital in the case, and its shares fell more than 40%.
The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal has published its judgment approving a £260 million settlement of Professor Barry Rodger's collective claim alleging Google locked UK Android app developers into the Play Store. Solicitors Geradin Partners and counsel led by Robert O'Donoghue KC will share £12 million, 32% less than they are due, while funder Bench Walk Advisors' profit is cut to £56.2 million. The tribunal found the deal just and reasonable once the risks of trial were taken into account.
George "Chip" Nierlich joined Debevoise & Plimpton as a partner in its antitrust group in Washington, D.C., Bloomberg Law and Law360 Pulse reported October 13, 2026. Nierlich comes from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, where he was most recently acting director of litigation and oversaw significant merger and conduct matters involving technology, healthcare and other industries.
Forty-eight states and territories asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut on Oct. 8 to preliminarily approve generic drug price-fixing settlements with Ascend Laboratories, Mayne Pharma and Citron Pharma, according to the states' motion. Ascend will pay $400,000 and Mayne $650,000; Citron, which ceased operations, agreed to non-monetary injunctive and cooperation terms. Connecticut's attorney general said the first trial is set for February 2027 in Hartford.
Foley & Lardner has added Jonathan Lasken as an antitrust partner in Washington after his service as assistant chief and senior litigation counsel in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and earlier as senior trial counsel at the FTC. He worked on matters including the DOJ's Apple case and Google ad-tech litigation and FTC challenges to deals such as NVIDIA-Arm.
Greenberg Traurig has added Jonathan D. Janow as a litigation shareholder in its Washington, D.C., office, the firm announced Oct. 8. Janow joins from Steptoe, where Law360 Pulse reported he had arrived in February. According to the firm, he represents pharmaceutical and life sciences companies in antitrust, class action, trade secret and other complex commercial litigation in federal and state courts nationwide.
The Federal Trade Commission on October 2 filed a proposed stipulated consent decree resolving its Robinson-Patman Act price discrimination lawsuit against Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits in the Central District of California. The decree carries no civil penalty or admission of wrongdoing. For six years, an independent monitor will oversee whether Southern Glazer's charges independent retailers significantly more than its five largest chain customers in 26 states, with payments owed to harmed retailers.
Bloomberg Law and the ABA Journal reported on October 2, 2026, that Carlsbad's Rubin Law Office filed a putative antitrust class action in the Northern District of California accusing Thomson Reuters of buying Casetext for $650 million and folding it into Westlaw to eliminate a lower-priced competitor. The complaint seeks class certification, treble damages, and an order to divest or restore Casetext; Thomson Reuters said it had not been served and declined comment until review.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1776, known as the Compete Act, on September 30, 2026 (Chapter 826, Statutes of 2026). From January 1, 2027, the Cartwright Act prohibits any person from monopolizing or monopsonizing any part of trade or commerce. Only the attorney general or a district attorney may sue, and plaintiffs must prove substantial market power. Qualifying California small businesses are exempt.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni preliminarily enjoined New York from enforcing Section 3 of General Business Law 340-B, the state's ban on algorithmic rent-setting tools, and denied Attorney General Letitia James's motion to dismiss RealPage's suit. In a 27-page opinion filed September 29, she called it a close call but found RealPage marginally likely to show the law restricts speech protected by the First Amendment.
Sixteen federal rules and notices published September 24 to 28, plus one Nebraska executive order. They include seven FAA airworthiness directives and new IFR altitudes, an IRS estate tax closing letter fee rising from $56 to $76, a 1.05% HUD Section 108 guarantee fee for fiscal 2027, PHMSA's adoption of ASME Section XII for transport tanks, FTC rules of practice changes, and Nebraska's 90-day, permit-free 25% weight allowance for harvest haulers.
A California federal court denied class certification to three putative purchaser classes accusing Energizer Holdings and Walmart of conspiring to inflate disposable battery prices through wholesale distribution agreements. U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts held that the plaintiffs failed to establish commonality and antitrust impact on a classwide basis, finding that their economists' difference-in-differences regression models did not satisfy the foundational parallel trends assumption.
Corteva Agriscience and gene-editing company Inari Agriculture settled their patent and plant variety protection litigation days into a jury trial in Delaware federal court over Inari's use of Corteva's patented corn and soybean seed deposits. Under a stipulated order of dismissal with prejudice signed by Judge John F. Murphy on September 28, Inari must destroy all Corteva biological materials within 30 days, assign its edited versions of Corteva traits to Corteva, and negotiate licensing agreements; other terms are confidential.
Britain's Competition Appeal Tribunal said it will certify an opt-out consumer collective claim against Apple and Amazon over an alleged 2018 agreement restricting Apple resellers on Amazon's UK marketplace, subject to changes to the funding arrangements and the class representative's pay before any collective proceedings order is made. The tribunal refused to certify claims covering purchases directly from Apple and other retailers, finding they rested on a speculative theory of harm. The judgment, [2026] CAT 75, is unanimous.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued insulin makers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, pharmacy benefit managers CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx, and rebate aggregators Zinc, Ascent and Emisar in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, his office announced September 22. The complaint alleges the manufacturers inflated list prices for insulin and related diabetes drugs while paying the PBMs rebates and fees for preferred formulary placement.
The Competition and Markets Authority on September 24, 2026 fined construction firm M&J Group £25,000 and two employees £25,000 combined for concealing a work mobile phone and paperwork during a warrant inspection in a bid-rigging probe, the CMA and BBC reported. The CMA said the penalties are its first civil penalties against individuals for concealing evidence and are separate from the ongoing competition investigation. The items were returned the same day.
U.S. District Judge Jane M. Beckering dismissed Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s antitrust suit against BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute on September 22, 2026. The court held Michigan lacked antitrust standing under the Sherman and Clayton Acts: the alleged decades-long conspiracy was not plausibly pleaded to have proximately caused retail energy overcharges, and Illinois Brick bars most indirect-purchaser overcharge damages. Beckering dismissed the federal claim with prejudice and declined supplemental jurisdiction over the state claim.
SB 1273 (Chapter 428), approved September 20, amended Business and Professions Code Section 25503.56, the tied-house exception for instructional tasting events on qualifying off-sale premises. Authorized licensees may conduct consumer tastings of wine, beer, or distilled spirits with per-person caps — one-fourth ounce for spirits, one ounce for wine, eight ounces of beer per day — and no charge may be made.
A twelve-state coalition led by California submitted a proposed consent decree in California federal court on Monday, settling antitrust litigation against Paramount Skydance's planned acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery. Under the thirty-two-page agreement, Paramount agreed to divest cable networks including Comedy Central and BET, maintain theatrical film quotas for five years, increase domestic production spending by $300 million annually, and establish independent editorial oversight boards for CBS News and CNN.
Subscribers to paid artificial intelligence services sued Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google in the Northern District of California on September 18, 2026, alleging the companies formed an illegal horizontal agreement to slow frontier model improvements. The complaint claims public statements endorsing coordinated development pacing, presented as AI safety measures, constitute an unlawful restraint on output and product quality under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, depriving consumers of faster competitive innovations.
Corrected . An earlier version of this piece misquoted the complaint. It attributed to paragraphs 111 and 112 a sentence the complaint does not contain; the complaint's words, in paragraph 112, are now quoted. It quoted Sam Altman as writing "OpenAI will do the same"; the complaint quotes "will do the same." It placed quotation marks around several passages the complaint paraphrases, gave some paragraph numbers incorrectly, and said each plaintiff subscribed to one defendant's product; three plaintiffs allege subscriptions to all four. It also quoted Dario Amodei's essay beyond what the complaint quotes. The piece now links the desk's copy of the complaint as filed.
Latham & Watkins hired Victor Levy as a partner in its Paris Antitrust & Competition practice on September 18, 2026, moving him from Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. Levy focuses on EU and French merger control, antitrust investigations, and follow-on damages, with sector experience in aerospace and defense, consumer goods, and industrials.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman denied OpenAI's emergency motion to compel production of a confidential settlement agreement between Apple, X Corp, and SpaceXAI in an antitrust lawsuit over artificial intelligence integration. Following an in camera inspection, the court held that the agreement contains no information relevant to summary judgment or trial issues. The court cited federal policy protecting confidential settlements to encourage compromise, noting discovery had closed on July 31, 2026.
Travers Smith hired Daniel Vowden, Mayer Brown’s UK antitrust head, as a partner in a lateral move reported on September 17, 2026. Vowden will split time between Travers Smith’s London office and its recently opened Brussels office after three years at Mayer Brown, marking the firm’s fourth partner hire in a fortnight as it steps up lateral recruiting.
Elon Musk's X Corp and SpaceXAI LLC moved to dismiss with prejudice their antitrust claims against Apple in Texas federal court on September 14, resolving allegations that Apple conspired with OpenAI to monopolize smartphone and generative AI markets. Plaintiffs stated the dismissal does not affect their ongoing antitrust claims against OpenAI entities. The filing did not disclose settlement terms. OpenAI stated it was not party to the agreement and requested disclosure of its terms.