In Re: Polyurethane Foam Antitrust Litigation
In 2010, Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs filed a Complaint on behalf of a proposed class of indirect purchasers of flexible polyurethane foam citing allegations of price-fixing behavior.
Counsel for Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs retained Dr. Russell Lamb to analyze whether it was possible to establish, using economic analyses and evidence common to the proposed class as a whole, that the Defendants agreed to fix, raise, maintain and/or stabilize prices and allocate customers for flexible polyurethane foam; whether proposed class members were impacted by the alleged misconduct, and more specifically whether all, or nearly all, proposed class members paid an overcharge on their flexible polyurethane foam purchases as a result of the alleged misconduct; and whether a formulaic methodology was available to measure total damages suffered by the proposed class due to the alleged misconduct.
Dr. Lamb filed two Declarations concerning class certification issues and two Declarations concerning liability and damages issues. Dr. Lamb also testified at deposition four times in connection and testified at the class certification hearing.
The Court certified the indirect purchaser class in this matter on April 9, 2014, specifically citing Dr. Lamb’s analysis of class-wide issues. For instance, in certifying the class, the Court stated that “Indirect Purchasers offer Lamb’s expert testimony, which contains a detailed examination of discovery material produced in this matter, corroborating Indirect Purchasers’ understanding of Defendants’ business. Lamb presents commonly-accepted regression models to measure the amount of overcharge suffered by direct purchasers, and then measures the extent to which that overcharge found its way through the distribution chain to indirect purchasers.”
The Court endorsed Dr. Lamb’s analysis, which applied advanced econometric models to transactional and aggregate data, noting that “Indirect Purchasers present a workable damages methodology.”
In January 2016, the Court approved a final settlement of $151.25 million, the fourth-largest settlement ever recovered by indirect purchasers in the United States.