Joseph R. Saveri

Antitrust & Class Actions

When antitrust plaintiffs’ attorneys like Saveri take a case to trial, they of course offer evidence to prove their clients’ damages. They refer to those amounts as “single damages” because damages verdicts in antitrust cases are automatically trebled. When antitrust cases settle, they virtually always settle for something less than the single damages amount.

Late last year, Saveri and his team did the unheard of. They settled the last portion of an antitrust case for enough to push the total amount recovered in the complex, multi-defendant litigation well above single damages.

“Very few cases even get to 100%,” he said. “There’s virtually no other case where the plaintiffs’ lawyers did as well for their clients as we did. I’m obviously very proud of that.”

The case alleged a long-running price-fixing cartel among 22 manufacturers of certain types of capacitors. Saveri represented hundreds of electronics manufacturers and wholesalers who purchased the capacitors. In Re Capacitors Antitrust Litigation, 3:17-md-02801-JD (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 5, 2017).

The single damages calculation for the entire litigation was $427 million, he said. Twenty of the defendants settled out over the years, leaving two to go to trial last fall. On what would have been the last day of that trial, the parties reached a $165 million settlement, which brought the total achieved from all settlements to $604.55 million — about 142% of the estimated single damages.

Saveri attributed his firm’s success to having a strong case and the attorneys’ experience and expertise.

Other antitrust actions his firm is pursuing currently include ones accusing various companies of “no-poach” agreements not to hire one another’s employees. Defendants include Saks Fifth Avenue companies, certain defense contractors in England and groups of outpatient medical centers.

The firm also is litigating antitrust actions alleging monopoly power against a couple of unusual sports businesses: Varsity Brands, which he said controls about 90% of the market for cheerleading competitions, and Ultimate Fighting Championship, which controls about the same share of the market for mixed martial arts fighters.

– Don DeBenedictis