Just weeks after Google was declared a monopoly by a federal judge, online reviews platform Yelp has joined in, filing its own private antitrust lawsuit alleging that Google operates a monopoly in the local search market.
As covered elsewhere in Law Street, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has attracted a fair amount of attention due to her activist antitrust enforcement. In recent years, a number of high-profile mergers have been challenged by antitrust authorities, including both the FTC and the Department of Justice.
Docket Alarm analytics can reveal whether antitrust attention from the federal government results in knock-on litigation effects, including further antitrust cases filed by private parties or state governments. .
Last week, RealPage was sued by the DOJ, accompanied by a blistering press release. RealPage is pricing software used by most of America’s top landlords; Law Street covered the wave of litigation against the company last year.
Since then, RealPage has been involved in 38 federal cases, including a large spike in March of this year. Most of these lawsuits are filed under Consumer Credit, but the second-most common case type is antitrust. Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison represents the company in the antitrust matters.
Another top antitrust target has been supermarket chain Kroger – in particular, the company’s acquisition of rival grocer Albertson’s. The deal was announced in 2022 and was challenged by the FTC earlier this year. The trial is currently underway, as of this writing.
Unlike RealPage, Kroger does not appear to have seen a wave of antitrust scrutiny in the last calendar year. It has participated in 291 lawsuits in the last 365 days. The top case type by far is Personal Injury, likely attributable to its status as a nationwide supermarket chain. Kroger has also faced product liability lawsuits. Many of these are connected to multi-district litigation surrounding the opioid epidemic; lawsuits allege the medication was distributed through Kroger pharmacies. Generally, these analytics do not reveal new antitrust litigation against the supermarket chain as it attempts to defend its acquisition.
