ANTITRUST
ANTITRUST
Justice Reaches $585 Million Antitrust Plea Deal with Computer and Video Screen Makers
Thomas Barnett, who has announced that he’s leaving his post as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s antitrust division on November 19, is certainly not slacking off in his final month on the job. Last week his office killed the Google-Yahoo advertising deal. And Wednesday, the antitrust division announced corporate guilty pleas with three manufacturers of LCD computer and video screens. The hardest hit, South Korea’s LG Display, will pay $400 million–the second-biggest criminal antitrust fine ever levied by the Justice Department.
Barnett hailed the antitrust division’s work in remarks prepared for his press conference announcing the deals. “The crimes committed by LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa and their coconspirators are among the largest and most far-reaching price-fixing conspiracies the antitrust division has ever detected,” he said.
The Recorder had an intriguing piece yesterday on which of the LCD companies had taken advantage of the Justice Department’s antitrust amnesty program. The likeliest candidate: Samsung, which The Recorder says is a huge player in the LCD market but was not named as a target of this investigation. The Recorder speculated that Samsung, which paid $300 million in a previous Justice Department antitrust probe, had taken advantage of Justice’s “amnesty plus” program, in which a company targeted in one antitrust case can receive a discounted fine and future immunity if it provides evidence of a separate conspiracy. Samsung’s lawyer, James McGinnis of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, did not return The Recorder’s call.
There’s also talk that Chunghwa Picture Tubes is an amnesty program beneficiary. The company is thought to be coughing up information in an antitrust investigation of the cathode ray tube market, which would explain why its fine in the plea deal announced Wednesday–$65 million–represents a smaller percentage of revenues than the fine LG is paying. Chunghwa was represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Gary Spratling, who happened to have designed the antitrust amnesty program as part of the Clinton Justice Department.
The third company to plead guilty on Wednesday, Sharp, will pay a $120 million fine. Sharp was represented by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. LG was represented by Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton.
The Am Law Litigation Daily — Nov. 14, 2008