FTC Suit Against Firm That's Not a Probe Target Reflects Rising Tensions Over Agency's Sweeping Document Demands
"What this is a sign of is the FTC is unlikely to back down when they don't receive information," Jamillia Ferris, a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said.
October 27, 2023 at 07:51 AM
4 minute read
Investigation
A new Federal Trade Commission lawsuit could suggest trouble ahead for companies that push back against the agency's hefty document-production demands, sometimes for probes in which they're not even a target.
Last week, the agency took the unusual step of suing one of those nontargets, the 257-store liquor chain Total Wine & More, saying its response to an administrative subpoena it received in February 2023 is "severely deficient in multiple respects."
Total Wine is among a cadre of companies arguing that document demands under the FTC's Biden administration leadership have become overly burdensome and overboard. Much of the companies' ire stems from FTC probes into possible violations of the Robinson-Patman Act, a Depression-era antitrust law that had gone unused for decades before FTC Chair Lina Khan dusted it off last year.
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