A federal district court in Colorado last week handed the Department of Justice (DOJ) its second victory in its fight to criminally prosecute allegedly unlawful labor agreements, holding that alleged non-solicitation (or “no poach”) agreements among the defendants and their competitors constituted per se violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
The ruling is the DOJ’s second major win in this space in two months. We wrote in December about United States v. Jindal, in which the DOJ prevailed in the face of a motion to dismiss its first-ever Sherman Act wage-fixing prosecution. Now, in United States v. DaVita, the DOJ has again enhanced its ability to tamp down on anticompetitive behavior in labor markets, although based on a slightly different analysis.
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