LGN is proud to announce that three of the firm’s partners were named in the Top 10 Powerhouse Antitrust Lawyers Shaping Minnesota’s Legal Landscape by Business Today. Dick Lockridge, Joe Bruckner, and Brian Clark were named to the list for their excellence in the field of antitrust law and their outstanding abilities in representing their clients.
Lockridge Grindal Nauen is proud to announce that seventeen of the firm’s attorneys were selected as 2023 Minnesota Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.
Kate Baxter-Kauf, Joe Bruckner, Brian Clark, Susan Ellingstad, Gregg Fishbein, Yvonne Flaherty, Dick Lockridge, Kristen Marttila, Charlie Nauen, Rebecca Peterson, Karen Hanson Riebel (Top 100 and Top 50 Women), Rob Shelquist, Heidi Silton and David Zoll have been named Super Lawyers. Super Lawyers recognizes the top 5% of outstanding lawyers in each state, who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement, from more than 70 practice areas.
Joe Bourne, Rachel Kitze Collins, and Arielle Wagner have been named Rising Stars. The Rising Stars recognition is given to the top 2.5% of up-and-coming attorneys in the state who are either 40 years or younger, or who have been practicing for 10 years or less.
The selection process is multi-phased including independent research, peer nominations and peer evaluations.
LGN Partner Rob Shelquist will speak on a panel at the Annual Rabiej Litigation Center Review of Class-Action Developments Conference on Thursday, July 20th. The conference panel speakers are judges, law professors, and practitioners. Rob will join others on a panel to discuss maximizing claims rates in consumer class actions.
Rob heads up the firm’s consumer protection and products liability litigation practice groups, and has represented individuals, small businesses and corporations in a wide range of civil litigation including defective and mispriced products, securities and ERISA, anti-competitive conduct, privacy, and the use of sharp business practices, fraud, misrepresentations, and other statutory violations in conjunction with the sale of goods and services.
Lockridge Grindal Nauen Summer Associates Consuela Abotsi-Kowu, Madeleine Kim, and Kira Le joined Partners David Asp, Kate Baxter-Kauf, Gregg Fishbein, and Kristen Marttila, along with Associates Paul Buchel, Greg Lawrence, Develyn Mistriotti, Stephen Owen, and Arielle Wagner, and Legislative Assistant Reen Reinhardt for a Friday night outing to see the Minnesota Twins battle the Baltimore Orioles. LGN’s Summer Associate program goes through the end of July and we are thrilled that Consuela, Madeleine, and Kira were able to join us this summer!
Lockridge Grindal Nauen congratulates associate Paul Buchel on his election to the MSBA Antitrust Law Section Council, which provides professional programs and education on antitrust matters; and monitors and comments, as appropriate, on pending legislative and regulatory developments. He succeeds Joe Bourne and Jessica Servais, who served on the council last year. The firm also boasts three emeritus members of the council: Joe Bruckner, Heidi Silton, and Craig Davis. Congratulations, Paul!
LGN Partner Kristen Marttila was selected by the Sedona Conference Working Group 1 Steering Committee to be a member of the Brainstorming Group on the Sufficiency of Rule 26(a)(1) Disclosures. The rule covers what must be initially disclosed during discovery. Congrats to Kristen!
LGN Partner Susan Ellingstad was recently interviewed by WCCO about a new Minnesota law that makes sexual harassment settlements tax-free. Watch the whole story at this link.
Susan heads the firm’s employment law department and her practice includes claims involving employment discrimination and harassment under Title VII, the MHRA and other federal and state employment statutes, wage and hour violations, commercial litigation, and class actions.
LGN Associate Arielle Wagner attended the Collaborative Bar Leadership Academy as part of the 2023 cohort. The CBLA is an annual, multi-day program for diverse bar association leaders, which provides leadership training and professional development programs which will benefit current and future leaders of bar associations, and the legal profession overall. This year’s CBLA was hosted in Minneapolis, MN from June 25-27.
LGN was proud to sponsor the Twin Cities Cardozo Society’s 22nd Annual Dinner on June 22nd. Steve Hunegs, Alan Milavetz, and Judah Druck were honored at the event for their commitment to serving the Jewish and general communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The Twin Cities Cardozo Society is a place for Jewish attorneys, judges, and law students to network and serve the community. They strengthen bonds among legal professionals through educational, social and philanthropic activities, and offer opportunities for communal involvement and leadership.
LGN Partner Kristen Marttila filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws (COSAL) in the Ninth Circuit Epic v. Apple litigation, supporting Plaintiff-Appellant Epic’s petition for en banc review. In the underlying litigation, Epic had alleged that Apple’s prohibition on third-party app stores and in-app-payment (IAP) systems from operating on its proprietary iOS platform violated the antitrust laws.
The panel opinion, like the district court below, gave only cursory treatment to the final step of its Rule of Reason analysis, in which anticompetitive effects of the challenged conduct must be balanced against any pro-competitive justification to determine the net effect of the conduct on consumer welfare. Rather than re-affirming the need for a meaningful balancing step, the panel held that “[i]n most instances,” that step could be satisfied with a single sentence recognizing that “a business practice without a less restrictive alternative is not, on balance, anticompetitive.” COSAL argued that this conclusion failed to recognize that the balancing step is the entire point of the Rule of Reason inquiry, and the panel’s formalistic application would allow even the most egregious anticompetitive conduct if the wrongdoer could offer some minor, pretextual, and post hoc explanation of procompetitive benefit. The brief further argued that Supreme Court precedent and persuasive authority from other courts of appeal make clear that courts must engage in a robust balancing process in Rule of Reason cases, and that this robust inquiry is needed to protect consumers and competition.
Ms. Marttila chairs COSAL’s amicus committee. Also representing COSAL in this matter were Geoffrey Kozen, Stephen Safranski, and Matthew Leighton at Robins Kaplan.
LGN is a longtime member of COSAL, which was founded in 1986 to promote and support the enactment, preservation, and enforcement of a strong body of antitrust laws in the United States.