In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation

Case Updates

The court denied the petition for permission to appeal the district court’s order, granting class action certification.

In it’s brief, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the Ninth Circuit to grant the defendants’ Rule 23(f) petition and reverse the district court’s order certifying a class of antitrust plaintiffs comprising 60,000 former employees holding 2,400 diverse job titles at seven different companies. The brief argued that such a class cannot be certified consistent with the Supreme Court’s holdings in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2451 (2011), and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1426 (2013), because individualized questions pertaining to liability and damages overwhelm common ones, and the plaintiffs introduced no evidence establishing a reliable method to calculate class-wide damages. As a result, the class certification order deprives both absent class members and defendants of their due process rights. It also imposes burdens disproportionate to the claims at issue.

Lewis J. Liman, Lawrence B. Friedman and Jennifer Kennedy Park of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP served as co-counsel to the National Chamber Litigation Center, the California Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.