Langer, Grogan & Diver PC

Firm Overview:

Langer, Grogan & Diver has specialized in protecting small businesses and consumers against anticompetitive business practices. It has litigated price-fixing cases, monopolization cases, and patent antitrust cases in diverse industries such as sports broadcasting, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural commodities. The firm’s clients have included small businesses, consumers in class actions, and generic pharmaceutical companies. The firm’s senior partner, Howard Langer, served as lead counsel in In re Linerboard Antitrust Litigation, 2004 WL 1221350 (E.D. Pa. 2004). On behalf of purchasers of corrugated boxes, Mr. Langer obtained what was at the time the largest antitrust recovery within the Third Circuit. He has written a basic text on antitrust law, Competition Law of the United States, (Wolters Kluwer, 2d. Ed 2015) and, for the past ten years, has taught the primary antitrust lecture course at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. New technologies have created new opportunities for big businesses to act in anticompetitive ways, and Langer, Grogan & Diver has made a niche at the intersection of cutting-edge developments in technology and antitrust law, most notably in its cases challenging anticompetitive broadcast practices of professional sports leagues such as the MLB, NHL, and the NFL in light of new streaming and distribution technologies.

The firm’s antitrust practice seeks to police the private marketplace against anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior. Its clients in the antitrust practice are often small businesses combating large corporations, or consumers victimized by monopolization or price-fixing practices. The same concerns for economic justice animate the firm’s consumer law practice, which has focused on protecting consumers form predatory market behaviors. The firm is a leader in the use of federal racketeering law (“RICO”) to bring to account large, mainstream financial entities profiting from various kinds of fraudulent and predatory commercial practices in the realm of constitutional and civil rights, the firm usually partners with a front-line, non-profit organizations, to bring impact litigation to address abuses of marginalized populations including immigrants, the economic poor and the stigmatized. What unites all of these practice areas is a commitment to using the rule of law to advance the concerns and welfare of the economically and politically disadvantaged. The firm takes seriously its role as a participant in the network of non-profits, like-minded firms and, where relevant, governmental actors that make up the ecology of advocates for social, economic and political justice.

Typically, LGD litigates complex civil matters, i.e., the cases are often class actions or actions against multiple defendants. These cases are brought in federal and state courts across the United States.

National Football League v. Ninth Inning, Inc.(C.D. Cal.) Case No. 2:15-ml-02668 – The firm represents a class of businesses and consumers in an action alleging an antitrust conspiracy between the NFL, its teams, and DirecTV to restrict access to out-of-market football games and drive prices up to access those games. The Ninth Circuit emphatically agreed that the plaintiffs’ allegations against the National Football League would, if proven, suffice to establish an antitrust violation. See In re Nat'l Football League's Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litig., 933 F.3d 1136 (9th Cir. 2019).A recent decision in the Central District of California granted class certification creating two classes, a commercial class including bars and restaurants and a residential class including fans both of which must have purchased NFL Sunday Ticket from DirecTV between June 2011 and February 2023.This decision comes after years of extensive discovery including depositions, expert reports, briefing and a class certification hearing held this year before U.S District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez of the Central District of California. A recent decision in the NFL Sunday Ticket litigation granted class certification creating two classes, a commercial class including bars and restaurants and a residential class including fans both of which must have purchased NFL Sunday Ticket from DirecTV between June 2011 and February 2023.This decision comes after years of extensive discovery including depositions and expert reports, briefing and a class certification hearing held this year before U.S District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez of the Central District of California.Case No. 2:15-ml-02668

Winters v. Ocean Spray (D. Mass) – The firm represents independent cranberry growers against Ocean Spray in an antitrust action alleging that Ocean Spray monopsonized the cranberry production market using anticompetitive methods. A settlement was reached.