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Companies today face enormous competitive pressures – from operating their businesses consistent with the antitrust laws, to gaining an edge over their competitors through lawful competitive means, to establishing and cultivating positive relationships with distributors and franchisees while adhering to state law and contractual obligations.

Butler Rubin represents businesses on both the plaintiff and defendant sides of complex antitrust and other competition-related matters. Unlike many other law firms with expertise in these areas, the firm not only counsels clients in the area but also regularly litigates antitrust cases. Butler Rubin provides services including:

• Antitrust Investigations – antitrust training seminars and compliance audits, representing both companies and individuals in criminal antitrust matters, responding to subpoenas, civil investigative demands and grand jury summonses in federal and state antitrust investigations.
• Antitrust Counseling – in areas including pricing, information exchange, supply and distribution chain management, trade association activity, dealer relations, and agreements with competitors.
• Unfair Competition Litigation – representing clients in a wide variety of antitrust, good faith and fair dealing, business tort and dealer litigation, including injunctions, trial and appeal. Over the past five years, the firm has litigated several high profile antitrust cases involving national and international monopolies and contracts.
• Trade Secrets/Business Torts Counseling and Litigation – from structuring relationships with new or existing employees, contract review and trade secret protection strategies through actually litigating matters for breach of agreement, misappropriation of trade secrets and employee theft.
• Distributor Risk Analysis – to clients who are in a position to either add or terminate new dealers or franchisees. This comprehensive analysis provides a summary of industry-specific state laws, outlines relevant case law across one state or all 50 states, and develops a case-specific approach to minimizing a company's legal risks.

From our first antitrust case as counsel for the plaintiff in the ground-breaking case Spray-Rite v. Monsanto to our current representation of a Fortune 500 company in In re Vitamins Antitrust Litigation, Butler Rubin has litigated competition disputes for a wide variety of companies to successful conclusion:

• Prevented former employee of an on-line trading company from disclosing key company secrets, including salary and other compensation information he unlawfully obtained concerning the company's top executives.
• Advised national magazine distributor faced with a competitor's interference with contracts essential to the distributor's business.
  Represent manufacturer of pet food in massive civil litigation to recover damages from multi-national manufacturers convicted of fixing prices on items used in the production of its goods.
• Represented executive of meat processing corporation targeted in an investigation of an alleged conspiracy to restrain trade in the foodstuffs industry.
• Prosecuted unfair competition case on behalf of largest franchisee in retread tire industry against market leader.
• Defended manufacturer in dealer termination litigation alleging violation of franchise and antitrust laws.

Our lawyers are members of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law, appointees to the Antitrust Council of the Illinois State Bar Association and members of the Chicago Bar Association's antitrust committee. Before joining Butler Rubin, the firm's attorneys held positions in the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the offices of State Attorneys General.

To learn more about our experience in Opt-Out Antitrust Litigation matters, please contact Jim Morsch at 312-696-4457 or jmorsch@butlerrubin.com.