USA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Djordje Petkoski, Matt Modell, Memmi Rasmussen and Tim Harris, A&O Shearman
Conclusion The investigative landscape of cartel enforce - ment is evolving in response to developments in the technological tools that businesses use. Federal and state regulators as well as private plaintiffs continue to monitor companies to ensure compliance with the antitrust laws. In an environment where litigation costs and burdens of investigation are only increasing, companies and individuals are advised to stay aware of developments of antitrust law and ensure they have robust systems in place for antitrust com - pliance training and risk assessment.
ment), a recent ruling in Duffy v Yardi Systems, Inc., significantly strengthened the DOJ’s argu - ment favouring a per se analysis. In Duffy, the US District Court for the Western District of Washington permitted plaintiffs’ claims – that multifamily residential unit operators conspired by exchanging competitively sensitive pricing information via Yardi’s algorithmic software to impose supracompetitive rents – to proceed under a per se analysis. The Duffy court held that plaintiffs had plausi - bly stated a claim that competitor defendants had “colluded to fix prices at above-market rates and imposed those prices on customers” , which is per se anti-competitive conduct. The court explicitly rejected the defendants’ argument that the novel algorithmic method justified a rule-of- reason standard rather than a per se analysis. This approach differs from the decision in In re RealPage, Inc., in which the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee allowed civil claims alleging landlords fed competitively sen - sitive pricing information into RealPage’s soft - ware to proceed under a rule-of-reason analysis, rather than per se treatment.
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