Analysis Group Consultants Coauthor Article on the Role of Economic Experts in Criminal Antitrust Litigation for CPI Antitrust Chronicle
May 16, 2024
Criminal antitrust enforcement has recently garnered heightened media attention due to several high-profile cases brought by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). As the government’s approach to criminal antitrust investigations has evolved, the role that an economic expert can play in criminal litigation has also grown. While civil and criminal antitrust investigations have some similarities, important differences exist in the ways that experts fulfill that role, as well as the scope of evidence accepted by courts. In an article in CPI Antitrust Chronicle, Managing Principals Jee-Yeon Lehmann and Samuel Weglein, Vice President David Toniatti, and Manager Solvejg Wewel explore these differences by analyzing expert work in three notable criminal antitrust cases that involved price-fixing or bid-rigging allegations: US v. Richard Usher, et al., US v. Christopher Lischewski, and US v. DaVita Inc. & Kent Thiry, which was the first criminal prosecution of an alleged no-poach agreement.
The authors open the article with an overview of the expert discovery process in civil and criminal antitrust cases. They then discuss disparities in the legal standard of proof and questions related to the relevance and scope of expert testimony in a per se environment – in particular, the establishment of violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In closing, the authors suggest that appropriate economic expert work could add “powerful insights relevant to the finder of fact in criminal matters.”