Elizabeth J. Cabraser

People grouse about airfares. Cabraser is trying to do something about them with a potential class action over claims that the four largest U.S. carriers - American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Southwest Airlines Co. and United Continental Holdings Inc. - have colluded for years to raise prices, restrain capacity and eliminate competition in violation of U.S. antitrust laws.

"People always wonder why if the price of jet fuel goes down, airfares don't follow," she said. "It's something like an adjustable rate mortgage: those also tend to go up and not down. We know that gas prices at the pump fluctuate on a hair-trigger basis, but airline ticket prices are much stickier." The proposed class comprises all who purchased domestic airline tickets from 2011 to the present. The multidistrict litigation, combining 23 separate antitrust suits, is before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington, D.C., who in February appointed Cabraser to the three-member plaintiffs' executive committee. In re Domestic Airline Travel Antitrust Litigation, 15-mc-01404 (consolidated Oct. 13, 2015)

It's hardly Cabraser's first airline price-fixing case. She once found herself in the rare role of an objector on behalf of travel agent clients in an earlier settlement over airline ticket prices. "The deal involved vouchers that created a new antitrust violation because they couldn't be used in the travel agent industry," she said. "It seemed to be a curable problem, and we got that corrected."

That case taught her a lot about airlines and how they work, she said, lessons that will be useful in the new matter. "Generally, what we've learned over the years about the industry will apply. You study, you learn from experts - that is always the key to plaintiffs' success. You learn all you can about how the business operates from the inside out. Then you can explain what went wrong, and it rings true."

Beyond the airlines case, Cabraser remains co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in multidistrict litigation over General Motors Co.'s allegedly defective ignition switches. She served as plaintiffs' liaison and co-lead counsel in a consolidated class action against the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. over an alleged decadelong deception on overcharges on foreign currency exchanges. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York approved a $504 million settlement last September. Cabraser remains sole lead class counsel in the massive Volkswagen "Clean Diesel" litigation. At a May 24 status conference, Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of San Francisco announced substantial progress toward a settlement. "We're not there yet, though," Cabraser said. "It's complicated. It's not a situation where the defendant can send out checks. It involves taking apart and putting back together cars."

- John Roemer