Price Fixing

Illinois indicates that the Machiavellian machinations of corporate colluders over œufs were the culinary culprit in this sense-scrambling story.

* Reminder: We’re in the disinformation phase where teachers may be legally required to teach “both sides” of being a Nazi in the bible belt. [WaPo]

* Man skills the old school version of an NFT: a $40,000 super rare Magic: The Gathering card. [ABC7]

* A bunch of Ivy Leagues and fancy-type schools could be facing conspiracy charges on price fixing. Unearth those antitrust outlines! [NBC News]

* Court decides it was permissible to fire police officers who ignored a robbery to play video games on their phone on the clock. [LA Times]

n the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Judge Matthew F. Kennelly recently held that plaintiffs alleging price-fixing in the text messaging market were not entitled to an adverse inference after failing to prove that defendants T-Mobile and CTIA destroyed emails in bad faith. Judge Kennelly also granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, as plaintiffs were unable to meet the elevated pleading burden for collusion to fix prices for text messages in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The plaintiffs had filed suit on behalf of customers who used pay-per-text-message services from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The Wall Street Journal published an article in September 2008, titled “Text Messaging Rates Come under Scrutiny,” inspired primarily by the antitrust investigation of Senator Herbert Kohl.[1] The day the article was published, a T-Mobile employee allegedly sent the text of the article via e-mail to both Adrian Hurditch, the company’s former Vice President of Services and Strategic Pricing, and Lisa Roddy, the company’s former Director of Marketing Planning and Analysis. Hurditch and Roddy e-mailed each other about the article; however, that e-mail thread no longer exists.

Poet Emily Dickinson makes an extended appearance in a major court ruling -- a ruling about books, of course.

This attorney filed an amicus brief -- as a cartoon!

* When Dewey tell the world that we’re dead, but not yet buried? The firm filed a notice with the New York State Department of Labor listing its closing date as yesterday. And what’s their reason for doing so? “Economic.” [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]

* “The continuing loss of revenue-generating partners and Dewey’s debt load has culminated in the imminent demise of Dewey.” Damn, the PBGC certainly doesn’t mince words. Say hello to the flailing firm’s latest lawsuit of many. [Reuters]

* A judge reinstated Le-Nature’s $500M case against K&L Gates for failure to detect fraud. Hope the firm has a half-billion lying around — they haven’t been doing too well with the whole honesty thing lately. [Businessweek]

* You stay classy, DSK! Your aggravated pimp hand is strong! Dominique Strauss-Kahn filed a $1M countersuit against Nafissatou Diallo because she “ruined his life, personally and professionally.” [Wall Street Journal]

* Conspiring to price fix? There’s an app for that! A federal judge denied Apple’s and several book publisher’s motions to dismiss a consumer class-action lawsuit about e-book pricing. [Media Decoder / New York Times]

* Now this is some backwards ass Fern Gully sh*t. A judge refused to dismiss Chevron’s racketeering and fraud lawsuit against New York attorney Steven Donziger for his work done in Ecuador. [New York Law Journal]

* Thomas Jefferson Law will be the site of the next solo incubator. This is a great way to keep your grads from suing you (not to mention a great way to increase your employed-at-nine-months rate). [National Law Journal]