Crowell Represents CalChamber in Challenge to Proposed Antitrust Overhaul

Los Angeles – May 3, 2024: Crowell & Moring LLP represents the California Chamber of Commerce in its work to make the case that California’s antitrust and competition laws do not need to be radically changed to target single firms that improve their market position through legal and naturally competitive means. Crowell Antitrust and Competition Group partner Eric Enson represents CalChamber and testified at the California Law Revision Commission hearing Thursday.

As stated in a CalChamber press release:

“The Legislature in 2022 directed the California Law Revision Commission to examine whether California should make major changes to its antitrust and competition laws, affecting every industry in the state, from large technology companies to media, health care, grocery and small businesses, among many others.

The Commission has scheduled three hearings on seven subject matter topics, with the goal of providing recommendations to the Legislature by the end of the year. The Commission convened working groups to prepare briefings on the subject matter topics. The first topic, Single Firm Conduct, was considered by the Commission yesterday.

Enson, in testimony submitted to the Commission, stated that the “legislative proposal” prepared by the working group rejects over a century of federal and state precedent designed to identify truly anticompetitive conduct and fails to distinguish between what is and what is not anticompetitive, thereby potentially outlawing the type of aggressive competition that the antitrust laws were designed to promote and that ultimately benefit consumers.

Enson also noted that the proposal was fundamentally flawed because it is not based on a demonstrated need for reform, but is based merely on anecdotal and unsupported beliefs that competition in California could be more robust, and it does not provide any economic analysis of the likely impact of the reforms. The proposal’s imprecision and lax standards, according to Enson, will chill competition and will lead to increased litigation that will result in inconsistent rulings among courts, together with rulings restricting pro-competitive conduct, making doing business in California more expensive, riskier, and less desirable, all of which is bad for California consumers and workers.

Enson also argued that California antitrust officials, and private citizens, can and have used federal antitrust laws to remedy unlawful behavior by single firms.”

Read Enson’s public comment on behalf of CalChamber here, and his testimony here.

Read the full CalChamber press release here.

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