COUNSELING CLIENTS AS TO STATE ANTITRUST AND DECEPTIVE PRACTICES LAWS

As you probably have already recognized from the remarks of the other speakers this morning, and from things you have been reading, it is a very different world in counseling clients than it was not very long ago. Then, all you had to worry about were the federal laws and the philosophy of the Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission that is, enforcement at the federal level. If you were a prospective plaintiff or a prospective complainant, you could assess your rights entirely on the basis of your analysis of federal laws and the philosophies of federal enforcers. On the other hand, if you were counseling a client who was a prospective defendant, there was only one area of the law to worry about federal law. If you could be satisfied that the proposed course of conduct did not violate federal law as it was being interpreted by the federal enforcers, you didn't have much of a problem. There might be some private actions brought, but by and large, the private actions tended to be brought under federal law and on the basis of the philosophies that were being articulated by the federal enforcers.