The settlement’s other provisions also ensure the continued operation of Transylvania Regional Hospital for at least three more years. Mission Health has further agreed to support the restoration of adult daycare services in Brevard, North Carolina, either by re-opening the adult daycare center or by working with the city to provide suitable space for such services. Mission Hospital will seek quality verification as a trauma center from the American College of Surgeons, and plaintiff municipalities and counties will receive additional advisory board materials pertaining to Mission Health to increase transparency.

The agreement acknowledges the contributions of Mission Health and HCA Healthcare’s doctors, nurses, and staff, particularly during Hurricane Helene and its aftermath, and reflects a resolution that provides lasting benefits to the people of Western North Carolina.

Learn more about the HCA Healthcare/Mission Health Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit.

On Thursday, January 16, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released their Joint Antitrust Guidelines for “Business Activities Affecting Workers,” replacing prior HR-focused antitrust guidelines. This comprehensive document lays out updated principles for enforcing antitrust laws in labor markets, focusing on practices that harm workers through suppressed wages, restricted mobility, and diminished bargaining power.

The document provides a detailed framework for identifying and addressing anticompetitive practices that affect workers. Key sections of the guidelines include:

1. Defining Anticompetitive Labor Practices:

• No-Poach Agreements: Agreements where employers agree not to hire or solicit each other’s employees, which restrict worker mobility. The guidelines make clear that such agreements are often illegal under the per se rule if they occur between competitors.
• Wage-Fixing Agreements: Agreements between employers to set wages or salary caps at a certain level. These are treated as serious violations akin to price-fixing in product markets.
• Non-Compete Clauses: The document also scrutinizes non-compete clauses, particularly those that excessively limit a worker’s ability to change jobs or start their own business, noting that these may be subject to rule-of-reason analysis.

2. Scope of Application:

The guidelines expand the reach of antitrust enforcement to include franchise relationships, staffing agencies, and other intermediaries that play a role in shaping labor markets. This is a key advancement in recognizing the modern complexities of employer-employee relationships.

3. Clarity on Enforcement Standards:

The guidelines delineate when antitrust violations should be analyzed under the per se rule (automatically unlawful) versus the rule of reason (a more contextual evaluation). For example, naked no-poach and wage-fixing agreements are presumed per se illegal, while other agreements may require deeper scrutiny.

4. Emphasis on Deterrence:

The document underscores the need for strong enforcement mechanisms, both civil and criminal, to deter anticompetitive practices. It highlights the DOJ’s increasing focus on criminal prosecutions in labor antitrust cases, supported by civil actions to secure damages for affected workers.

These updates reflect a growing acknowledgment of the unique challenges workers face in today’s labor markets and aim to close gaps in prior enforcement efforts.

Lieff Cabraser’s Role in Shaping These Guidelines

The guidelines prominently feature precedents set by Lieff Cabraser. Over the years, the firm has successfully litigated cases that have defined how antitrust laws protect workers, including:

High-Tech Employees Case (ND Cal): This groundbreaking case set the standard for workers to recover damages from collusive agreements between employers. It shaped how damages are assessed in cases of wage suppression and worker mobility restraints.

Franchise Cases (BK, 11th Cir.; McD, 7th Cir.): These cases established that no-poach agreements within franchise systems can be per se illegal under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, paving the way for greater accountability in franchise labor markets.

These cases form the backbone of the legal standards codified in the new guidelines, underscoring Lieff Cabraser’s pivotal role in advancing worker protections.

Continuing the Fight for Worker Protections

Lieff Cabraser remains a leader in labor antitrust litigation, with ongoing cases that align closely with the new guidelines:

Med Center No-Poach Case: The civil counterpart to the DOJ’s first criminal no-poach prosecution, this case seeks to re-establish deterrence through civil liability.

McDonald’s No-Poach Case: Applying the Seventh Circuit’s new legal standard, this case advances worker protections within franchise systems.

Academic Journals Case: This litigation challenges anticompetitive practices in the academic publishing industry that suppress pay for scholars and scientists.

The DOJ/FTC Joint Antitrust Guidelines highlight the increasing importance of protecting labor markets through antitrust enforcement. By integrating precedents established by Lieff Cabraser, these guidelines set a clear roadmap for addressing anticompetitive practices and ensuring fair treatment for workers.

To explore the full guidelines, visit the DOJ’s website here.

This marks the fifth AAI Private Enforcement Award for Lieff Cabraser, earned for their extraordinary work on the McDonald’s “No-poach” Employee Pay Suppression Case. The case challenged restrictive franchise agreements that limited employee mobility and suppressed wages. Their work led to the Seventh Circuit’s recent favorable opinion in the litigation against McDonald’s, a major victory for workers’ rights.

The LCHB team succeeded in vacating the district court’s grant of summary judgment and denial of class certification, and fought off a cert petition in the Supreme Court. The published Seventh Circuit decision, written by Judge Easterbrook and joined by Judge Wood, is the first appellate ruling to set the antitrust liability framework for no-poach agreements. It also clarified and narrowed the primary affirmative defense to collusion claims, marking a pivotal moment in modern antitrust law.

Led by Lieff Cabraser partners Dean M. Harvey, Anne B. Shaver and Jessica Moldovan, the McDonalds “No-Poach” team played a critical role in protecting fast-food workers’ rights and setting a legal precedent for future no-poach litigation.

The award will be presented at the Institute’s gala dinner in Washington, DC on October 30^th, following the AAI’s 18th Annual Private Antitrust Enforcement Conference.

Kudos to all!

Learn more about Lieff Cabraser’s Antitrust/No-Poach Cases here.

As Inside Higher Ed reports, this case is part of a broader pushback against the power imbalance in the academic publishing world. For years, scholars have had little leverage, as career advancement depends heavily on publishing in prestigious, high-impact journals. The lawsuit contends that publishers exploit this dependency, diverting taxpayer-funded research dollars into private profits.

Lieff Cabraser partner Dean Harvey, who represents the plaintiffs, spoke to both Higher Ed Dive and Inside Higher Ed about the significance of this lawsuit. Harvey noted, “For-profit academic journals have exploited scholars and taxpayers by colluding. The academic publishing industry has acted as though the antitrust laws do not apply to them, and believe scholars do not deserve the same protections as everyone else. They are mistaken.”

Higher Ed Dive highlights the immense profits these publishers generate by controlling access to research. In 2023, the six publishers collectively earned over $10 billion from their peer-reviewed journals, with Elsevier alone bringing in $3.8 billion. The lawsuit claims this revenue is built on illegal agreements that suppress competition and delay the release of critical scientific findings.

This system, which relies on unpaid academic labor, also stifles scientific progress. As noted in Inside Higher Ed, scholars are trapped in a “publish or perish” cycle, where publishing in top-tier journals is essential for career advancement, yet those journals exploit them by keeping peer review unpaid. The lawsuit claims that this model has slowed advancements in fields like cancer research, quantum computing, and climate change.

The case seeks to dismantle these anticompetitive practices and foster a more equitable academic publishing system, where scholars are fairly compensated for their labor and research can advance without unnecessary delays. It also aims to encourage academics to explore alternative systems, potentially driving more competitive solutions to the longstanding issues in the academic publishing industry.

About Dean Harvey

A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s San Francisco office, Dean M. Harvey represents individuals and companies in antitrust, business tort, employment, and intellectual property litigation. His cases seek to remedy and prevent wrongful conduct by dominant firms. These precedent-setting lawsuits concern a wide variety of industries and markets. Remedies include reimbursing purchasers who have overpaid for price-fixed products; preventing monopolists from stifling innovation and eliminating competition; and obtaining damages for businesses, inventors, and copyright owners.

Mr. Harvey was a leader in the High-Tech Antitrust class action against Google, Apple, Intel and other tech giants for allegedly conspiring to suppress the mobility and compensation of their technical employees. This landmark case resulted in the largest recovery (by far) of any class action asserting antitrust claims in the employment context: $435 million. Mr. Harvey continues the fight to ensure that employees receive competitive compensation, currently representing a doctor in a class action alleging an unlawful no-hire agreement between the medical schools of Duke University and the University of North Carolina.

The lawsuit asserts that HCA Healthcare and Mission Health have restricted competition in their respective health care markets, substantially and artificially inflating health care prices paid by plaintiffs and the proposed class member health plans. The complaint states that Mission Health’s illegal practices have allowed it to reduce competition and keep its reimbursement rates to insurers higher than they otherwise would be, causing patients to pay significantly more for health insurance.

This case has garnered extensive media coverage and attention from the North Carolina Attorney General’s office, highlighting concerns over the significant decline in care quality at the hospital under HCA/Mission Health’s management.

U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger of the Western District of North Carolina denied HCA/Mission Health’s motions to dismiss on all fronts. The litigation will now move forward to trial.

Learn more about the HCA Healthcare/Mission Health Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit.

The virtual panel will feature antitrust attorneys from government, plaintiff-side, and defense-side firms who will discuss recent key antitrust developments touching labor competition, including the FTC/DOJ withdrawal of safe harbor guidelines for information sharing, several DOJ criminal prosecutions of alleged no-poach agreements and, most recently, the DOJ’s dismissal of its remaining no-poach case. Panelists will go over the implications of these and other developments for in-house and other attorneys navigating the state of labor market enforcement and private litigation.

For more information and to register for the event, visit the ABA’s website.

About Anne Shaver

Anne Shaver is a partner in Lieff Cabraser’s San Francisco office with a practice focusing on employment law cases. She has taken a leading role in gender class action lawsuits that challenge business practices and work cultures at some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world, including Google, Goldman Sachs, and KPMG. Her passion for upholding worker rights has most recently been focused on gender discrimination “impact litigation,” where she represents clients seeking to alter core business practices in ways that transform not just individual companies, but entire industries.

In June of 2022, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel filed a federal class action complaint against Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, and Softbank Group challenging the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint as a violation of the antitrust laws, specifically the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act. The case was brought on behalf of AT&T and Verizon subscribers.

As alleged in the complaint, the merger reduced the number of mobile carriers in the U.S. from four to three and eliminated vibrant competition from Sprint. It left the three remaining behemoth companies, the new T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, in a far less competitive market and gave them the opportunity to charge more while delivering less. The complaint further alleges that as a result, AT&T and Verizon retail customers have paid higher prices on a quality-adjusted basis.

On November 3, 2023, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin denied T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and ordered the company to face the lawsuit from AT&T (T.N) and Verizon (VZ.N) subscribers who claim the mobile communication giant’s deal for rival Sprint hurt competition and caused them to pay billions of dollars more for wireless service. In his 41-page ruling, Judge Durkin noted that the plaintiffs “plausibly” argued that higher prices “flowed directly” from the $26 billion merger.

Judge Durkin denied T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss AT&T and VZW customers on antitrust standing grounds, despite the fact that they did not transact directly with T-Mobile. Judge Durkin also denied the motion to dismiss on the basis of failure to allege anticompetitive effects. The proposed class action on behalf of tens to hundreds of millions of consumers seeks a range of penalties, including the undoing of the 2020 T-Mobile-Sprint merger.

Lieff Cabraser partner Brendan Glackin, who co-represents the plaintiffs in the case, noted he was grateful for the court’s “well-considered order” and eager to move forward with the case, which may be the most significant private merger challenge ever. “This is a major victory, not just in this case, but in creating a path for challenges of mergers post-consummation, when the new merged firm fails to deliver on the promises it made to get the merger past initial review and challenges,” added Glackin. “And this particular merger has harmed hundreds of millions of people.”

Learn more about the T-Mobile / Sprint Merger Antitrust Litigation.

About Brendan P. Glackin

The Chair of Lieff Cabraser’s Antitrust practice group, Brendan P. Glackin has represented direct purchasers of titanium dioxide in a nationwide antitrust class action lawsuit ($163.5 million in settlements); direct purchasers of flat-panel TV screens in litigation against the world’s leading LCDs manufacturers for conspiring to fix prices ($470 million in settlements; retailers in a monopolization pricing lawsuit against Abbott Laboratories charging that the company exploited the market for AIDS medicines used in conjunction with Abbott’s prescription drug Norvir, and employees in the high-tech workers class action alleging that major Silicon Valley firms colluded to reduce competition for workers.

Brendan has contributed groundbreaking work in litigation against drug makers for blocking access to affordable generics. This includes the blockbuster brand-name prescription drug Cipro ($399 million in settlements), which led to a 2016 “California Lawyer Attorney of the Year” (CLAY) award. Brendan continued his work in the field of generic drugs as lead counsel for Nashville General Hospital (the Hospital Authority of Metropolitan Government of Nashville) in a class-action antitrust case against defendants for monopolizing enoxaparin, the generic version of the blockbuster life-saving anti-coagulant Lovenox, which in 2019, settled for $120 million, the second largest indirect-purchaser antitrust pharmaceutical settlement fund in history, after Cipro.