Daniel M. Wall

Over a 35-year career, Daniel M. Wall, a Latham & Watkins LLP partner, has litigated more than 100 antitrust cases, argued more than a dozen antitrust appeals and steered more than 50 mergers through Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice reviews.

Even so, Wall encountered something new when he co-led a team representing industrial aluminum company Novelis Inc. in its $2.6 billion acquisition of Aleris Corp. "It was a routine merger, but the process became significantly different because the Department of Justice let us resolve their concerns through arbitration rather than through months of litigation in court," he said.

Antitrust Division officials allowed the deal to close and then entered the arbitration process to settle their issue with the merger of two of the four major manufacturers of the aluminum that goes into auto-making.

"They offered us an unusual option: We'll let you close, if you'll agree to arbitrate the question of whether you have to sell one of the plants involved in the deal. It was an experiment. They were interested in seeing whether that approach would be faster and more efficient. The parties would choose the arbitrator rather than have the case assigned to a random federal judge."

Wall and the DoJ picked a retired antitrust lawyer. "We arbitrated in February in a moot courtroom in the basement of a Department of Justice building in Washington," Wall said. "As it happened, the DoJ's position prevailed. But the merger went through and we got the arbitrator's decision in five days. It was a good thing to have an antitrust expert in the arcane economics of deals like this hearing this case." U.S. v. Novelis Inc., 1:19-cv-02033 (N.D. Ohio, filed Sept. 4, 2019).

"When they filed the suit and immediately referred the matter to arbitration, people in the antitrust world noticed. My phone was ringing with folks saying, 'I want that too,'" Wall said.

In April, Wall prevailed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco for five German automobile manufacturers known as the Circle of 5--including Audi AG, BMW AG, Daimler AG, Porsche AG and Volkswagen AG, plus their U.S. subsidiaries--accused of conspiring to not compete against one another on the size of gas tanks. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District dismissed the class action, though he allowed one class of plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint on a tangentially-related issue. In re: German Automotive Manufacturers Antitrust Litigation, 17-cv-04314 (N.D. Cal., filed July 28, 2017).

Wall, who represents BMW, said the plaintiffs will likely appeal but are unlikely to prevail. "The case is essentially over," he said.

-- John Roemer