Lead Counsel Selected in Airline Price Fixing MDL

money.cnn.com

On February 4, 2016, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly appointed Washington, D.C. attorneys Steve Williams and Michael Hausfeld as co-lead counsel in the airline price fixing multidistrict litigation (MDL), In re: Domestic Airline Travel Antitrust Litigation. Judge Kollar-Kotelly also approved Williams and Hausfeld’s recommendations of Elizabeth Cabraser, Robert Kaplan and Warren Burns as executive committee members. According to lead counsel, the executive committee was purposefully kept small in order to stay comparable to the number of defendants in the litigation.

Plaintiffs allege that major airlines, Southwest, Delta, United and American, all conspired to fix the price of domestic flights. Collectively, the defendant airlines own 80% of the airline market and, according to Plaintiffs, have kept flight capacity artificially low in order to price-fix domestic flights. In October 2015, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation approved the plaintiffs’ motion to consolidate 69 class action suits pending against Defendants in 15 different district courts, establishing the airline price-fixing MDL in Washington, D.C. under U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

Both the plaintiffs and defendants have been asked to submit proposed filing schedules. Additionally, Judge Kollar-Kotelly asked the plaintiffs’ lead counsel to draft proposals for handling Plaintiffs’ litigation costs by February 25, 2016. 

The case is: In re: Domestic Airline Travel Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 2656

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