Raffi Melanson is an associate in Crowell & Moring’s Washington, D.C. office and a member of the firm's Antitrust Group. Raffi's practice focuses on litigating antitrust and complex commercial cases involving the electronics, telecommunications, and pharmaceutical industries. Raffi has substantial experience before the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice, working on price-fixing investigations and merger reviews. His practice also includes representing Fortune 500 companies as plaintiffs in affirmative recovery actions brought in the United States and the European Union.
Raffi’s recent antitrust experiences include:
- Representing a global electronics manufacturer in defense of price-fixing claims brought by direct and indirect purchaser class plaintiffs.
- Representing a major telecommunications provider in connection with a DOJ investigation into alleged anticompetitive conduct.
- Representing United Technologies in its proposed $30 billion acquisition of Rockwell Collins.
- Representing AT&T in its proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner.
- Representing a not-for-profit hospital network in its proposed merger with a local healthcare network.
- Counseling corporate clients on affirmative recovery through opt-out litigation.
- Counseling a corporate client as an interested third party to a proposed merger.
Raffi also represents clients in a variety of consumer protection and advertising matters, including advertising counseling, as well as challenges before the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau.
Raffi maintains a very active pro bono practice. He has successfully secured asylum and withholding for political refugees in immigration hearings before the U.S. Immigration Courts. He has also represented civil rights plaintiffs and criminal defendants in jury trial cases in both federal and state-level courts.
Before joining Crowell & Moring, Raffi served as a trial attorney with the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General’s Public Interest Division, where he represented the public in complex antitrust, consumer protection, and non-profit litigation before state and federal courts. As part of his practice, Raffi managed government investigations into consumer credit markets, in addition to investigations into several network-based industries, including the media distribution, transportation, telecommunications, and energy industries.
Raffi received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a journal editor and moot court competitor. As a law student, he clerked with the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and interned for the Honorable Henry H. Kennedy Jr., U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia. Raffi received his B.A. in International Relations, Economics and Mathematics from Boston University.
Affiliations
Admitted to practice: District of Columbia, New York, Massachusetts (inactive), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Client Alerts & Newsletters
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"Is This the "3ve" of the Digital Ad Fraud Age?,"
Advertising & Product Risk Management Alert
(December 20, 2018).
Contacts: David Ervin, Lauren Aronson, Raffi Melanson
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"FTC Flexes Enforcement Authority against Louisiana Real Estate Regulatory Agency for Anticompetitive Policies,"
Antitrust Law Alert
(June 5, 2017).
Contacts: Ryan C. Tisch, Raffi Melanson, Andrew I. Gavil, Chahira Solh, Shari Ross Lahlou