On Tuesday, the Department of Justice confirmed that it is investigating price fixing in the chocolate industry.  According to the Wall Street Journal:

The investigation, which had been previously reported, had not been acknowledged by the federal officials. Price fixing is a criminal violation that can bring stiff fines and sometimes prison terms for executives. In recent years, U.S. and foreign antitrust enforcers have aggressively pursued such cases.

“The Department of Justice antitrust division is investigating the possibility of anticompetitive practices in the chocolate manufacturing industry,” a department spokeswoman, Gina Talamona, said Tuesday. She declined to elaborate.

Canadian regulators in November began probing whether the Canadian divisions of Hershey Co., Mars Inc. and Nestle SA fixed prices. Since then, European antitrust regulators have opened inquiries and dozens of civil lawsuits have been filed against the chocolate companies. The companies have said they’re cooperating with the investigations.

The Recorder, via law.com, has a fascinating article about juror comments following the hung jury in the recent DRAM antitrust trial. 

After 11 trial days, the first thing jurors talked about when they could finally discuss the price-fixing case before them was the government’s star witness, foreperson Phyllis McCaughey said Thursday.

And she was blunt about their assessment of Micron executive Michael Sadler, who testified in the high-stakes DRAM antitrust prosecution against his counterpart at Hynix, defendant Gary Swanson: “Mr. Sadler, we all felt, was a lying sack of shit.”

…

Speaking in the courtroom after Judge Phyllis Hamilton released them, jurors indicated they were evenly split when they first began deliberations. But they quickly tilted 11-1 for acquittal and stayed that way for several days. Just before they entered the courtroom for the final time, McCaughey said one of her colleagues in favor of acquittal wavered, so the final count was 10-2.

The foreperson said she believed Sadler was a “ringleader” in the price-fixing conspiracy and didn’t deserve a pass from the government. Since Micron was the first computer memory company to report the price-fixing scheme, all of its executives — and the company — received amnesty.

Even Joe Supple, the teacher who was the government’s lone defender in the jury room, acknowledged misgivings about Sadler.

“He didn’t sit well with many of us,” Supple said. “It seemed to be like the bad guy getting away with it.” Swanson was the only executive caught up in the government’s DRAM investigation to go to trial, and the case was closely followed by dozens of lawyers.

I’d post the entire article, it is that good, but Antitrust Review would prefer to avoid copyright violations.  Instead, here is the link again.

The always interesting Sports Law Blog wonders if Michael Vick will also be banned from the Canadian Football League as well as the NFL. 

Since the NFL announced its suspension of Michael Vick, many of my esteemed colleagues have presumed that Vick will also get banned from the Canadian Football League (”CFL”) based on the “Ricky Williams Rule,” which prevents any player suspended by the NFL from entering the CFL.

But is there an antitrust problem?

Isn’t it true that an agreement amongst all of the teams in a pro sports league to boycott a class of players would indicate a prima facie case of an antitrust violation? Isn’t it also the case that the CFL has market power in the labor market for players banned by the NFL (presuming that issue is even relevant) because NFL teams are not part of the viable market for such players’ services?

… under antitrust law, there are less restrictive alternatives for the CFL to prevent the entry of troublesome players, such as for the CFL to review the candidacy of each prospective player on a case-by-case basis. A case-by-case review of players banned by the NFL would make more sense given that the CFL has already “grandfathered” players that are currently playing in the CFL but previously banned from the NFL. In a statement that may prove especially damning to the CFL, the CFL in November of 2006 stated that “one of the reasons for the ban is to maintain a good relationship with the NFL.”

Indeed, the biggest challenge to bringing a suit against the CFL may involve proving U.S.-based anti-competitive effects given that much of this allegedly anti-competitive conduct occurred outside of the United States.  However, given that most of the football players that would be banned from the CFL under this rule live in the United States, as well as that some of the CFL fans reside in the United States, and that CFL games are broadcast into the American market through Dish Network, DirecTV and America One, these concerns should not prevent a bona fide antitrust challenge against the Ricky Williams Rule in United States federal courts.

Of course, the question is a slightly premature as Vick will have to serve twelve to eighteen (at least) first.

Yesterday, the House held a hearing on House Bill 1902 which would “prohibit brand name drug companies from compensating generic drug companies to delay the entry of a generic drug into the market ….”  The House Committee on Energy and Commerce heard from FTC Commissioner Leibowitz, Mike Wroblewski of Consumers Union, Professor Scott Hemphill (Columbia Law), Phillip Proger of Jones Day, Ted Whitehouse of Willkie Farr, and Bernard Sherman, CEO of Apotex.  The AP (via Forbes.com) has a short article about the hearing.

In other Congressional antitrust news, last week the Senate Judiciary Committee passed Senate Bill 879 which would “amend the Sherman Act to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal.”  As Trade Regulation Talk explains, the bill

would allow the federal government to take legal action against foreign states, including members of OPEC, for price fixing and artificially limiting the amount of available oil. … The bill, which would amend the Sherman Act, would clear the way for the federal courts to hear antitrust suits against OPEC, according to Senator Herb Kohl, the bill’s sponsor and chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee.