Amicus Brief: In re T-Mobile USA, Inc.
COSAL filed an amicus brief in In re T-Mobile USA, Inc. in support of Plaintiffs-Respondents’ opposition to Defendant-Petitioner T-Mobile’s request for interlocutory review of the Northern District of Illinois’s denial of T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss. In November 2023, the district court denied T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss because, among other things, the court concluded that plaintiffs have antitrust standing to challenge defendants’ alleged anticompetitive conduct even where those plaintiffs paid increased prices to non-defendants as a direct result of the defendants’ alleged anticompetitive conduct. Following T-Mobile’s request for interlocutory appeal, however, the district court granted leave for T-Mobile to seek interlocutory appeal from the Seventh Circuit, reasoning that there were “substantial grounds for a difference of opinion.” Soon thereafter, T-Mobile sought permission from the Seventh Circuit for an interlocutory appeal, arguing that the district court misapplied Twombly’s pleading standard and misinterpreting Seventh Circuit precedent regarding antitrust standing.
COSAL’s brief argued that interlocutory review of the district court’s decision was unwarranted because: (1) T-Mobile’s request for interlocutory review misconstrued the pleading standard under Twombly and, carried to its logical conclusion, would permit a defendant to secure dismissal by pointing to hypothetical alternative causes for plaintiffs’ alleged harm to overcome despite well-pled and plausible factual allegations that such harm was directly caused by defendants’ alleged misconduct; (2) T-Mobile’s arguments wrongly suggested that the Supreme Court’s decision in Twombly displaced established Seventh Circuit precedent regarding the requirements to plead antitrust standing; and (3) that T-Mobile’s arguments in its request for interlocutory review were waived and not adequately preserved in the district court.
The brief was drafted by COSAL Amicus Committee Co-Chairs, David Cialkowski and Nate Regenold, and Michael J. Flannery and Lissa Morgans of Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuCa, LLP.
