Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Contribution, Claim Reduction,And Individual Treble Damage Responsibility: Which Path To Reform Of Antitrust Remedies?, Edward D. Cavanagh

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust violations traditionally have been viewed as statutory torts,' yet tort principles of damage allocation, including contribution and claim reduction, have not been extended by analogy in the federal courts to antitrust cases. Moreover, the principle of joint and several liability, made applicable to antitrust conspirators by judicial fiat some eighty years ago, has gone largely unchallenged. While the federal antitrust laws are nearly a century old, the damage allocation debate is of recent vintage, emerging in the wake of the Electrical Equipment Cases, when the private treble damage remedy came into its own.

The recent emergence of contribution and …