Our first runners-up this week are antitrust trial teams at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, led by Ryan Shores and Heather Nyong’o, and at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, led by Sara Razi and Lindsey Bohl. They squared off with lawyers from the Federal Trade Commission in a seven-day bench trial over Tempur Sealy International Inc.’s $4 billion acquisition of Mattress Firm Inc.—the nation’s largest mattress maker and retailer of mattresses, respectively. In a 115-page decision unsealed this week, U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge in Houston, Texas, rejected the FTC’s proposed definition of the relevant antitrust product of “premium” mattresses as those priced at $2,000 and more. The judge further found the merger wasn’t likely to lessen competition since Tempur Sealy committed to divest certain stores and reserve a portion of Mattress Firm floor space for rival manufacturers. Those moves, he concluded, were “sufficient to prevent the merger from inflicting any substantial harm to competition.” The team representing Mattress Firm also included Simpson Thacher partner Preston Miller, associates Avia Gridi, Nicholas Ingros, Geoffrey Schmelkin, Nicholas Prendergast, Lara Fishbane and Calvin Reeh, with local counsel Michelle Gray and Carly Milner of Fogler, Brar, O'Neil & Gray. The team representing Tempur Sealy also included Cleary partners Daniel Culley, Blair Matthews, Bruce Hoffman and Lina Bensman and counsels Boaz Morag and Matthew Bachrack, with local counsel, Alex Roberts of Beck Redden.

Another antitrust team at Simpson Thacher representing McKesson Corp. helped lead the briefing for a group of drug distributors accused of colluding with each other and drug manufacturers to fix the prices of generic drugs. After six years of litigation, this week U.S. District Senior Judge Cynthia Rufe in Philadelphia dismissed with prejudice the claims brought on behalf of indirect reseller plaintiffs or IRPs—independent pharmacies and hospitals. The judge wrote that “without allegations that can plausibly show that distributor defendants had some power to set or influence prices and market share, the IRPs cannot demonstrate that defendants acted in concert to violate the antitrust laws.” The Simpson Thacher team representing McKesson included partners Abram Ellis and Sara Razi, counsel Joshua Hazan and associate Avia Gridi. The defense line-up also included Reed Smith representing AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and H.D. Smith, Crowell & Moring representing Cardinal Health Inc. and The Harvard Drug Group and Foley & Lardner representing Red Oak Sourcing.