Allan Steyer

Steyer co-founded Steyer Lowenthal Boodrookas Alvarez & Smith LLP in 1993 and helped it expand into a 16-lawyer litigation boutique.

"There's a big focus on antitrust," he said. "You're dealing with highly competent and intellectually gifted lawyers. It's the A-team, it's high stakes. I like that."

In a current large antitrust class action against Sutter Health's network of Northern California hospitals, Steyer and three other firms represent plaintiffs who claim Sutter used its market power to tie inpatient services at inflated prices to other services in its contracts with health insurance plans. Sidibe v. Sutter Health, 12-CV04854 (N.D. Cal., filed Sept. 17, 2012).

"It's a tying case," Steyer said, "and it's a case of significant magnitude."

Sutter settled for more than half a billion dollars parallel cases in San Francisco County Superior Court filed by a class of plaintiffs and Attorney General Xavier Becerra. That deal is awaiting final approval.

"Sutter's contracts require any health plan that uses any Sutter facility must use all of them," Steyer said.

The trial date is currently set for Jan. 11, 2021. The court has certified an injunctive relief class but denied certification for a damages class; Steyer and colleagues' renewed motion for certification of a damages class is set for a hearing July 2 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler of San Francisco.

Beeler last fall allowed the plaintiffs to present additional evidence supporting certification of a damages class by showing that Sutter's anticompetitive conduct commonly impacted class members and that the plaintiffs' economic model can reasonably estimate damages for class members.

The renewed motion Steyer filed asserts the plaintiffs' economic expert "conservatively estimates that, on a weighted average basis, 97.16% of Sutter ... overcharges are passed through to all Class Members."

Steyer has fought hard to keep the case alive. Beeler originally dismissed it, only to be reversed by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in 2016. The attorney general got involved after that, putting momentum behind the plaintiffs' civil claims.

In another antitrust class action that got a boost from government prosecutors, Steyer is among those suing the nation's largest poultry producers for conspiring to fix prices. In re: Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation, 16-CV08637 (N.D. Ill., filed Sept. 2, 2016).

In early June, federal prosecutors criminally indicted some of the same industry executives named in the class action.

"Sure, that's a plus," Steyer said.

One of the defendant poultry producers, Tyson Foods Inc., has applied for amnesty and -- under the rules governing antitrust prosecutions -- will, if its application is accepted, be required to cooperate with the plaintiffs' lawyers.

Steyer takes time to poke fun at himself, as in a note on his firm's website describing how his representation of the co-founder of Facebook Inc., Eduardo Saverin, was presented in the movie "The Social Network" as the work of a female attorney.

"We got a laugh, but she was a senior partner, and I can't complain about that," he said.

-- John Roemer