Shari Ross Lahlou

Shari Ross Lahlou is an experienced first-chair trial lawyer who focuses her practice on antitrust and other complex litigation matters. She regularly handles high-stakes, high-profile matters for Fortune 500 companies and is well-regarded for achieving successful outcomes and delivering excellent service. Ms. Lahlou has experience in a broad array of industries, including healthcare, telecommunications, hospitality, chemicals, and transportation.

Ms. Lahlou represents clients throughout the United States in federal and state courts and in government investigations addressing a diverse range of antitrust, contract and business tort, licensing, and intellectual property issues. She has extensive experience with class actions and multi-district litigation, and regularly argues dispositive and class motions on behalf of her clients and joint defense groups. She has obtained significant trial court and appellate victories for her clients across a range of antitrust matters, including: claims alleging conspiracy, monopolization, tying, and exclusive dealing.

Recently, Ms. Lahlou successfully defended Marriott International against claims brought by TravelPass Group LLC, a downstream online travel agency, alleging a conspiracy among major hotel brands related to branded keyword bidding in online advertising. After five days of a jury trial, she secured a highly favorable resolution that completely vindicated Marriott, with TravelPass publicly acknowledging that Marriott did not participate in any unlawful activity and formally apologizing to Marriott and the Marriott family.

Ms. Lahlou is also recognized for her extensive antitrust merger litigation experience on high-profile transactions. Recently, she was lead trial counsel for PeroxyChem in obtaining approval of its US$640 million merger with Evonik following a 2-week trial in D.C. federal court, which represented the first FTC merger-challenge loss in 5 years.

She was also lead trial counsel for Humana in the 13-day trial of the Department of Justice's lawsuit to block its US$39 billion proposed merger with Aetna. Ms. Lahlou also represented AT&T in multiple mergers, including its recent headlining acquisition of Time Warner and its earlier proposed acquisition of T-Mobile.