Major magazine publishers and distributors have spent years unsuccessfully trying to dodge claims that they conspired to drive the magazine wholesaler Anderson News out of business. Now they want to take the offensive against Anderson with antitrust counterclaims of their own.

If the Supreme Court rules later this year that pharmaceutical sales representatives are exempt from overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the high court could knock out class action wage-and-hour claims pending against a half-dozen major drug companies. But Novartis and its lawyers at Cravath apparently weren't willing to gamble that the Justices would see things the drug companies' way.