Defining a 'market' creates headaches for antitrust plaintiffs

Bloomberg Law spoke to Christine Bartholomew on a report that plaintiffs who sue under federal antitrust laws must define a “relevant market” for their allegations, a threshold issue that has become a stumbling block for high-stakes litigation in recent years. The latest example came Feb. 3, when a federal jury found for US Soccer and MLS in a case claiming they colluded to exclude an upstart league from the top tiers of men’s professional soccer in the US and Canada. “There’s no magic, fully agreed upon single way to define a market,” said Bartholomew. “It is a very unpredictable, very outcome-determinative component of any antitrust case.”