A three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit unanimously has revived an antitrust class action filed by Burns Charest clients accusing Atlantic City casino hotels, their parent companies, and a hospitality technology company of colluding to fix room prices with a shared pricing algorithm that received and used each casino hotels’ confidential data. According to Law360, “the 3rd Circuit panel said the plaintiffs should be given a chance to gather technical evidence about the software, writing, ‘AI software can facilitate ?collusion by enabling competitors to coordinate prices and share information without ever communicating with each other.’"

The firm’s Christopher J. Cormier, who serves as Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel, told Reuters that the ruling "applies established legal principles in a common-sense way to modern technologies that have the capacity to cause widespread harm to competition and consumers across vital segments of the economy." Chris described “the well-reasoned and well-written ruling” as “the result of great work by the entire plaintiffs’ counsel group, including my Burns Charest colleagues and co-counsel at Susman Godfrey and Lite DePalma,” and “key amicus support from the American Antitrust Institute, the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws, the Open Markets Institute, and prominent antitrust law professors and economists.” He concluded, “We will continue to seek justice for our clients and move this case, and others like it that should benefit from this major ruling, to trial."

The news was also covered in Bloomberg Law and in ALM/Global Competition Review.