Gibbs & Bruns is lead trial counsel in two upcoming trials featured on Law 360‘s annual “Trials To Watch in 2025” list.
Our firm was retained as replacement lead trial counsel by Google in July 2024 in a significant antitrust and deceptive trade practices act lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with seventeen other states.
Google Faces Latest Ad Tech Antitrust Trial
A Texas-led coalition of conservative state attorneys general will go to trial against Google at the end of March over accusations that it held a monopoly on online advertising, using its powerful position to block competitors in the online ad matching space.
The Texas-led suit is one of several suits by other states and the U.S. Department of Justice, advertisers and publishers. Google said in December that the case has “shape-shifted” over the course of four years and is now really one over state deceptive trade practices claims more than antitrust law.
Google and the DOJ await a ruling in a similar case from a Virginia federal judge who heard closing arguments at the end of November.
A major side fight in these two cases and a third in D.C., has been the plaintiffs’ attempt to sanction Google over policies that, until February 2023, automatically deleted most internal company chats after 24 hours and guided employees not to discuss certain topics via email and to copy lawyers on emails in a bid to apply privilege.
Google has so far escaped sanctions, but this and other elements of the previous trials could seep into the upcoming one, said Peter Jackson of Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP.
For the upcoming state plaintiffs, “maybe some of the remedies they will seek will have already been rejected or put in place,” and the states will tune their case “informed by decisions that these other courts make,” Jackson said.
The case is State of Texas et al. v. Google LLC, case number 4:20-cv-00957, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
In addition, in the Fall of 2019, we were retained as lead trial counsel to augment the existing representation by Vorys Sater LLP of seventeen national retail merchant plaintiffs known collectively as the “Target Plaintiffs’ Group,” in their individual, opt-out action against Visa and Mastercard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Visa and Mastercard Head to Court Over Target, Macy’s Swipe Fees
Visa and Mastercard are set for a six-week trial on Oct. 20 on claims they overcharged Target, Macy’s, T.J. Maxx and three other retailers as part of a long-running multibillion-dollar antitrust battle between the card companies and some 60 chain store plaintiffs.
The six plaintiffs in the October trial, which include Marathon Petroleum, Circle K and the Gap, additionally accuse Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and other banks of antitrust violations.
The nearly 20-year-old case involves claims that the card companies conspired to maintain a set of rules that allowed them to overcharge merchants via interchange and “network” fees whenever customers swiped. The cases are widely seen as posing potential liability in the range of tens of billions of dollars.
The defendants have said the case isn’t legitimate because the store plaintiffs “do not pay such fees directly, and instead pay them to intermediaries in the payments chain.” That would make them indirect purchasers who have no standing, the defendants have argued.
The cases are 7-Eleven et al. v. Visa et al., case number 1:13-cv-04442, and Target et al. v. Visa et al., case number 1:13-cv-03477, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
