On October 30, 2023, Troutman Pepper won a billion-dollar antitrust matter in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed summary judgment granted a year earlier. Troutman Pepper represented Thompson, a large dealer of Caterpillar heavy construction equipment. Plaintiff International Construction Products LLC (ICP) originally filed suit in the District of Delaware, accusing Thompson of conspiring with two other dealers and manufacturers Caterpillar and Komatsu, to boycott IronPlanet, a website that hosts used heavy construction equipment auctions. After Thompson’s portion of the case was transferred to the Northern District of Florida, Thompson sought and obtained an accelerated discovery schedule. At summary judgment, the district court found that ICP had failed to adduce direct or circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy, relying on key undisputed facts developed during the expedited discovery process and adduced during depositions of Thompson’s corporate designees. In the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion affirming summary judgment for Thompson, the court determined (consistent with Thompson’s arguments) that “[a]t most, ICP has put forth evidence tending to show that defendants independently harbored concerns about the effects the IronPlanet-ICP deal would have on the heavy construction equipment industry and their own respective businesses and communicated those concerns to IronPlanet in the form of requests for additional information. That conduct is not illegal under the Sherman Act.”
The team on this case includes Jeremy Heep, Robin P. Sumner, Melissa Hatch O’Donnell, James H.S. Levine, Sarah Harris-Finkel, Mary Patricia Walsh, Stephen F. Conaway, and Misha Tseytlin.