Bridget S. McCabe

LOS ANGELES - As a member of Baker & Hostetler LLP's cartel and government antitrust investigations task force, many of Bridget S. McCabe's recent cases involve representing clients caught up in governmental investigations.

Currently, she is part of the litigation team representing a Fortune 100 corporation in a confidential criminal antitrust investigation regarding alleged price-fixing.

She also represents a Fortune 50 company as a third party asked to produce discovery in the federal government's litigation accusing Google of monopolizing the internet search market.

And she and a team represent an aerospace engineering employment firm in an ongoing federal criminal no-poach investigation.

The cartel and investigations task force was formed last August within the firm's antitrust and competition group in response to the governmentwide focus on antitrust.

The Biden administration has ramped up enforcement in general, McCabe said, especially within the labor market. That focus "has sparked a number of criminal matters and grand jury investigations, and that also generates ... follow-on civil litigation, class actions in particular," she said.

Many investigations and follow-on class actions accuse competitors of making "no-poach" agreements not to hire one another's employees. After executives at several aerospace engineering outsourcing firms were indicted last December for allegedly having such an agreement, more than 30 civil suits were filed against the companies within a matter of weeks, she said. McCabe is defending one of those companies in the now-consolidated litigation. Borozny v. Raytheon Technologies Corp., Pratt & Whitney Division, 3:21-cv-01657 (D. Conn., filed Dec. 14, 2021).

She is representing E.W. Scripps Co. in a large class action accusing more than a dozen television broadcast companies of conspiring to inflate prices for local ads across the country. In re: Local TV Advertising Antitrust Litigation, 1:18-cv-06785 (N.D. Ill., filed Oct. 9, 2018).

The multidistrict litigation sprang from earlier Justice Department consent decrees. "The plaintiffs have alleged a very broad case [with] 127 local markets plus a national market," McCabe said. Although 14 million pages have been produced, discovery is still continuing after four years of litigation.

In a very different case, she is part of the team representing Chevron and other oil companies suing the U.S. government. "It's essentially a breach of contract matter, but the contract dates back to World War II," McCabe said. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. United States, 1:20-cv-01784 (Ct. Fed. Cl., filed Dec. 8, 2020).

During the war, Chevron and other oil companies contracted with the government to rush the production of airplane gasoline. The contracts contain indemnification clauses, and McCabe's clients are now suing for about $65 million in environmental cleanup costs. Even though the contracts are about 80 years old, "the costs are continuing to occur, so there is no statute of limitations conflict," she said.