Law Commons^™

Let The State Decide: The Efficient Antitrust Enforcer And The Avoidance Of Anticompetitive Remedies, Andrew J. Fuller

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

If the antitrust remedy a private party pursues would likely have anticompetitive consequences, would only the government constitute an efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws? Imagine that a plaintiff sues for a remedy so large that the award of the remedy would meaningfully increase market concentration by sending the defendants into bankruptcy. Is such a plaintiff an efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws? Should courts hold that in this situation only the government should be able to challenge the alleged conduct? These questions have gone unaddressed in academic literature because litigation rarely raises the specter of the anticompetitive remedy. Recently, …