AGG Talks: Antitrust and White-Collar Crime Roundup - Inside the World of No-Poach Investigations and Indictments
#WorkforceWednesday: ACA Preventive Coverage Mandate Blocked, Another No-Poach Loss for DOJ, and Employers Prepare for the End of the COVID-19 Emergencies - Employment Law This Week®
Trade Secret / Restrictive Covenant 2022 Year In Review (Fairly Competing, Episode 19)
Class Action | Eleventh Circuit Reinstates No Hire Antitrust Claims Against Burger King
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Podcast | Episode 100: Marguerite Willis, Nexsen Pruet Attorney
The Latest on Antitrust Compliance
III-42-The New Overtime Rule and Antitrust Issues With Your Non-Competes
Employment Law This Week®: Employee Mobility
II-31- The Changing 9 to 5 From 1980 to Today
Employment Law This Week®: Criminal Prosecution of Anti-Poaching Agreements, EEOC Publishes 2017 Data, Organizational Changes at NLRB, NYC’s “Cooperative Dialogue” Requirements
II-26 – Superbowl Concerns, Tax Reform/MeToo, Restrictive Covenant Crimes, and Expanded Religious Discrimination Theories
In October 2016, the Obama Administration announced that it would criminally prosecute no-poach and wage-fixing agreements among competitors for talent. Starting in December 2020, through the Trump and Biden Administrations,...more
Last year, we reported on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to dismiss its only remaining criminal no-poach case and regroup. We advised that the DOJ was unlikely to abandon criminal no-poach cases entirely and would...more
2023 was a dramatic year for criminal antitrust enforcement in the United States. The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) garnered big wins: three convictions at trial,1 $267 million in criminal fines...more
Nearly seven years after first announcing its intent to criminally prosecute employers and individuals for anticompetitive conduct in labor markets, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ or Division) voluntarily...more
On November 13, 2023, the DOJ Antitrust Division moved to dismiss its last remaining no-poach indictment. In 2021, a Texas grand jury indicted Surgical Care Affiliates (“SCA”) and a related company for conspiring with...more
As we discussed earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in recent years has brought numerous criminal prosecutions against companies accused of engaging in so-called “naked” no-poach agreements, i.e.,...more
Summary - Following a string of unsuccessful prosecutions in the labor space, the DOJ Antitrust Division moved this week to dismiss its last indicted criminal no-poach case, which had been pending against Surgical Care...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to pursue no-poach agreements as criminal conduct despite yet another recent defeat, this time in United States v. Patel. In Patel, the DOJ alleged that employees of an aerospace...more
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Justice has tried three criminal no-poach cases to a jury, and in all three the defendants were acquitted. But expect the crackdown on the use of allegedly illegal no-poach agreements...more
Previously relegated to purely civil enforcement, in the last year the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has increased its focus on pursuing criminal charges for anti-poach agreements between companies that attempt to...more
The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has suffered setbacks in its precedent-setting criminal prosecution of no-poach agreements in labor markets. The latest and perhaps most surprising defeat occurred when the...more
On April 28, 2023, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division suffered another setback to its expanded criminal prosecution of no-poach agreements. The trial court in United States v. Patel, et al., granted a motion to...more
The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have in recent years prioritized in their antitrust enforcement activities protecting workers from alleged anticompetitive...more
Two of the Department of Justice’s labor-market criminal antitrust prosecutions have seen interesting recent developments. (See our previous coverage of this prosecution trend, reported on: Feb. 9th; May 2nd; Sept. 22nd; and...more
In 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order directing antitrust enforcers to make sure that health care would be an area of emphasis for antitrust enforcement, and in 2022 they did. Federal regulators brought several...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division secured its first win in a criminal enforcement of labor market antitrust violations on October 27, 2022, when nurse staffing company VDA OC pleaded guilty to violating...more
A healthcare staffing firm in Nevada just pled guilty to conspiring with a competitor to fix wages for school nurses and agreeing not to solicit each other’s workers – the nation’s first-ever successful criminal prosecution...more
On October 27, 2022, VDA OC, LLC, (VDA) a Nevada health care staffing company, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition for the services of school nurses. According to the plea,...more
Despite back-to-back losses in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) first-ever criminal no-poach and wage-fixing cases, the Antitrust Division (the Division) is not backing down from its enforcement focus on labor. In...more
The U.S. Department of Justice appears to be close to reaching a plea deal that would result in the nation’s first-ever successful criminal prosecution of a workplace-related antitrust matter – and it should send a clear...more
Last month, the first two trials arising from the DOJ’s recent push to criminally prosecute wage-fixing and employee non-solicitation agreements both ended in acquittals on the antitrust charges. In United States v. Jindal,...more
Last week, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division suffered back-to-back trial defeats in its recent enforcement initiative to use the Sherman Act to stop employers from using allegedly...more
The Department of Justice’s first criminal wage-fixing and no-poach cases ended in acquittals, but we don’t expect this will lessen the DOJ’s scrutiny on competition in labor markets....more
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) recently suffered significant losses in two criminal trials involving alleged criminal wage-fixing and related “no-poach” agreements by and between competitors. These were...more
In the span of 24 hours, two closely-watched federal jury trials both ended in defeat last week for the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (“the Division”). The trials were considered bellwethers in gauging how the...more