We Filed an Amicus Brief to the United States Supreme Court in a Significant Antitrust and Competition Case
We filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court for a non-profit called We All Help Patients, Inc. in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, which is a competition case where the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against a State Dental Board made up of private dentists.
Dentists offer teeth-whitening services for significant profits. So when people and companies that weren’t dentists started to offer these services for less money, dentists started complaining to the Board about these competitors.
Because the Dental Board was dominated by dentists, it had an incentive through these dentists to eliminate non-dentists competitors from the lucrative teeth-whitening business. And that is exactly what they did.
The Board’s actions violated the US antitrust laws. The members were competitors that acted in agreement to exclude other competitors.
The Federal Trade Commission, which has long sought to protect consumers and economic liberty from state-boards of private competitors, filed an action against the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners and ultimately held that the Board violated the federal antitrust laws and the FTC Act. The case made its way up through the Fourth Circuit—which agreed with the FTC—and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court.
You can read more about this case and our amicus brief at the link below.
We have substantial experience in writing and filing amicus curiae briefs in state and federal courts. For example, Jarod Bona filed a US Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) a couple years ago in FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc. (also involving antitrust and state-action immunity). If you have a company or organization and want your voice heard by an appellate court in a significant case—usually a State Supreme Court or the US Supreme Court—please contact us.