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 the closing days of the Biden administration, antitrust law enforcers issued cautions to employers about conduct that could draw criminal charges against them. One is the use of restrictive non-disclosure agreements that...more
The American Bar Association Antitrust Law Section’s annual Spring Meeting concluded on April 12. The annual Spring Meeting featured updates from federal, state and international antitrust enforcers and extensive discussion...more
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and now state attorneys general, have set their sights on staffing companies in their evolving efforts to examine labor markets through an antitrust lens....more
Maybe don’t get a drink with your competitor. These are not easy times to be in human resources. Attracting, recruiting, and retaining talented employees is as challenging as ever. As I have previously written, wages are...more
In an important case of first impression that drew amicus participation from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the International Franchise Association, the Seventh Circuit reversed a judgment in...more
Can non-compete agreements lead to criminal fines—or even jail time? Yes, they can. That is because violating the Sherman Antitrust Act can result in criminal charges, not just civil liability....more
On April 28, 2023, U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden issued the latest blow to the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) efforts to criminally prosecute individuals who engage in “no-poach” agreements by granting the defendants’...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division — for the third time in the span of a year — recently failed to convince a jury that alleged agreements to fix or stabilize labor markets should be punished criminally. It...more
In 2022, antitrust authorities around the world were pursuing more investigations, bringing new types of cases, and making policy changes to spark even more enforcement actions. In the United States, the Department of...more
The Department of Justice has claimed its first victory in attacking “no-poach” agreements after a Nevada staffing company pled guilty and was sentenced to pay $134,000. The case arose out of a concerted effort by the...more
In June 2021, the Supreme Court reaffirmed in NCAA v. Alston that antitrust claims under Section 1 of the Sherman Act “presumptively” call for rule-of-reason analysis and that only the rare case merits “quick look” or per se...more
The current labor market is fraught with challenges for employers. In the wake of the COVID-19 market disruptions, the demand for employees, especially for experienced or highly trained employees, far exceeds the supply....more
On April 14, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas handed the U.S. Department of Justice its first loss in prosecuting an alleged wage-fixing crime and the first verdict ever in a criminal prosecution of wage-fixing under...more
WHAT HAPPENED - - On back-to-back days this month, defendants charged and prosecuted by the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (the DOJ) were acquitted on all Sherman Act charges in first-of-their-kind criminal...more
Recent actions by the Biden administration, including the Treasury Department’s report on the State of Labor Market Competition in the U.S. Economy, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Labor (DOL) and...more
Recent actions by the Biden administration, including the Treasury Department’s report on the State of Labor Market Competition in the U.S. Economy, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Labor (“DOL”) and...more
On January 28, 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado declined to dismiss a criminal antitrust indictment alleging a dialysis operator, DaVita Inc. (“DaVita”), and its former CEO colluded with...more
The focus on using the antitrust laws to target labor markets has been gaining momentum for years, but the close of 2021 saw the trend hit overdrive with antitrust attacks on perceived harm to workers coming from all corners...more
Over the past five years, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and civil litigants have rigorously challenged the lawfulness of buy-side restraints of trade, including noncompetes, no-poach, and nonsolicitation agreements, under...more
More than four years after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jointly released the Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals in 2016 (Antitrust Guidance), the DOJ has...more
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) has recently announced two indictments alleging criminal antitrust violations against employers involving wage negotiation and no-poach theories. The cases, which...more
Since issuing its 2016 Antitrust Guidance affirming focus on enforcement of fair competition in labor-employment buy-side markets and warning of criminal remedies for those participating in illegal no-poach agreements, the...more
“No poach” agreements -- agreements between two or more competitors that neither will recruit or hire the other’s employees – have long been held to violate the antitrust laws. The United States Justice Department and...more
The Antitrust Division has warned companies that it would bring criminal indictments against companies that enter into illegal no-poach or wage-fixing agreements. The Antitrust Division has now put its money where its mouth...more
In 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued Joint Guidance for Human Resource Professionals warning that no-poach agreements restricting employee hiring may violate the antitrust...more