Erik Koons

Practice Areas

Antitrust Litigation and Class Actions, Antitrust and Competition Law, Antitrust and Competition Law Counseling, Antitrust Cartel and Government Investigations and Enforcement, Antitrust Consumer Products, Class Actions, Crisis Management, Investigations Toolkit, Litigation, Merger Control, Foreign Direct Investment, and Foreign Subsidies, White Collar

Career

Erik Koons is a Partner in the Antitrust and Competition practice of Baker Botts' Washington, D.C. office. He has more than twenty years of experience representing many of the world's leading companies in bet-the-company antitrust litigations involving the full gamut of competition related claims, including those alleging price fixing, market and customer allocation, monopolization, monopsonization, “sham” patent litigation, tying and bundling. Many of these litigations have involved massive, nationwide class action claims for both direct and indirect purchaser plaintiffs as well as suits brought by state and federal governments. Erik’s class action defense experience involves claims seeking in the hundreds of millions to over $10 billion in alleged damages. Erik's experience has been concentrated in the pharmaceutical, medical device, CPG/FMCG, technology, telecom, chemical, manufacturing, transportation and electronics industries. Erik devotes a substantial amount of his practice representing companies in internal competition-related investigations and in connection with investigations launched by federal antitrust enforcement agencies and states attorneys general. He regularly counsels corporations on competition-related business matters and designs and implements antitrust compliance programs for clients across the globe.

Erik was a member of the trial team that received dismissals of six of the seven price-fixing and monopolization charges for McWane, Inc. in an eight-week bench trial against the FTC. The dismissals marked the first time in nearly 20 years that the Commission ruled against itself following an in-house trial in front of the agency’s administrative law judge. The case earned the McWane trial team the award for “Behavioral Matter of the Year- Americas” by Global Competition Review.

Erik is a sought-after writer and speaker on a wide range of antitrust topics and has authored competition related articles and publications, including as co-author of the recent chapter of “GCR Know How” and co-editor of the ABA’s publication on Obtaining Discovery Abroad, 3rd ed.

Erik devotes a portion of his practice to pro bono matters involving those who might otherwise lack access to justice. For example, Erik mounted a constitutional challenge when his client was confined to solitary incarceration for three years as punishment for defending himself against a brutal assault by a prison gang that left the client in the hospital for an extended period. Erik tried the case before a federal jury in Syracuse, New York and obtained the only verdict of its kind awarding both compensatory and punitive damages to an incarcerated plaintiff seeking compensation against the state. Erik has worked on dozens of other pro bono matters involving applications for DNA evidence review in connection to applications for actual innocence and criminal expungement work to rid individuals of the stigmas that often prevent them from obtaining gainful employment.

From 1999-2000, Erik was clerk to the Hon. Norman A. Mordue, United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of New York.

Professional Memberships

District of Columbia Bar

New York State Bar

United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fifth and Ninth Circuits

United States District Courts for the Northern, Southern, and Eastern Districts of New York

United States District Court for the Northern District of California

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Personal

J.D., Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law 1998

B.A., Rutgers University 1995

with highest honors

Eagleton Institute of American Politics, undergraduate fellow, 1994-1995