© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Feb. 4) – U.S. District Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington, DC has chosen Dallas trial lawyer Warren Burns and two other non-Texas lawyers to a leadership role in a series of class action lawsuits filed across the country accusing the major airlines of violating antitrust laws.
Dozens of lawyers across the U.S., including Burns, filed class action lawsuits after the U.S. Department of Justice announced last summer that it had served the airlines with a civil investigative demand seeking additional information about potential anti-competitive practices.
“There’s a lot of fishy stuff going on in airline economics,” Burns said in an interview Thursday. “This should be an economic environment that leads to prices coming down, but they have not.”
Burns said he is representing his clients on a contingency fee basis, meaning he will recover a percentage of any money the plaintiffs win but he gets nothing if he loses the case.
Southwest Airlines General Counsel Mark Shaw has hired Vinson & Elkins antitrust law expert Alden Atkins, who is a partner in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.
American Airlines hired O’Melveny & Myers as its law firm in the case. But it is guaranteed that American Airlines Deputy General Counsel Bruce Wark, who led the airline through antitrust battles against the DOJ when it merged with US Airways, will also play a significant role in the litigation.
Burns argued that the litigation should be consolidated and litigated in Dallas because two of the airlines are based here and because the case had been assigned to U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn, who he said would do an excellent job managing the litigation.
The Multidistrict Litigation Panel, however, chose Judge Kotelly, who handled the American and US Airways antitrust fight with the Justice Department. Judge Kotelly also was the jurist in the Justice Department’s lawsuit 15 years ago against Microsoft.
Judge Kotelly this week appointed Burns, California class action lawyer Elizabeth Cabraser and New York trial lawyer Robert Kaplan to serve as the plaintiffs’ executive committee.
The antitrust class action lawsuit is not expected to go to trial until next year, if it makes it to trial at all.
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