Quinn Emanuel was recently retained as trial counsel in a high-stakes antitrust case in the Northern District of California. The Quinn Emanuel team parachuted in to try the case with co-counsel at Cohen Millstein just months before trial. After twelve days of trial, the jury reached a unanimous verdict in three hours, awarding our client, Pacific Steel Group, $110,000,000 (pre-trebling).
Pacific Steel Group is a California-based furnish-and-install contractor. They bend and shape rebar for use in construction, which relies heavily on this commodity product. The dispute arose when Commercial Metals Company, a Texas-based competitor of Pacific Steel, purchased and shut down California’s only rebar mill, creating a regional monopoly in the rebar market. Pacific Steel planned to disrupt this monopoly by building a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly steel mill using advanced Italian technology. However, Commercial Metals allegedly pressured the Italian supplier to block plaintiff Pacific Steel from accessing the necessary technology by creating a 500-mile radius “exclusivity” zone for the Italian technology around the steel mill they bought and shut down.
The defendants primarily argued that the relevant market extended beyond California and that their exclusivity agreements were standard competitive practices. However, the jury found these defenses unconvincing, especially in light of evidence of deliberate efforts to suppress local competition and inflate prices. After years of litigation, Pacific Steel Group prevailed at trial on November 5, 2024.