An Analysis Group team comprising President Pierre Cremieux, Managing Principal Marc Van Audenrode, and Vice President Marissa Ginn published “A Comparison of Damage Theories in Price-Fixing Cases in the United States, Canada, and the European Union” in the Winter 2017 edition of the Class Actions and Derivative Suits newsletter of the American Bar Association's Section of Litigation. The article uses an intuitive example to illustrate the economic impact of price-fixing in the marketplace, and to explain the differing evolution of litigation frameworks for private actions in the United States, Canada, and the European Union. In each jurisdiction, the regimes governing who can sue in private actions for damages, and what claims are allowed, differ; in particular, the standing of indirect purchasers and the admissibility of a pass-on defense shape the nature of private antitrust damages actions. The article illustrates how implementation, as well as upcoming precedents, may yet determine what the different frameworks imply for actual compensation levels.
Associated People

Marc Van Audenrode
Dr. Van Audenrode is an expert in data analysis and econometrics, labor economics, antitrust and competition policy, and public economics. He has consulted to clients - including law firms and government agencies - in Canada, the US, and Europe. Dr. Van Audenrode’s work includes developing a methodology to value desktop software; he also developed expertise valuing goods as varied as restaurant franchises, executive stock options, or smartphone features. His recent work in public economics includes evaluating the economic rent from hydroelectricity to the Canadian economy and the value of logging rights on the ancestral territory of a Canadian First Nation. In the area of labor economics, his work has included filing an expert report assessing fair compensation for Quebec provincial judges and Quebec prosecutors and advising Quebec’s commission on pay equity. Dr. Van Audenrode has filed expert reports in courts in the US, Canada, Belgium, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and has testified in Canada and the US. He recently filed a report with the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in support of the settlement reached between Ageas and claimant organizations in the Fortis case, the largest settlement ever reached through the Dutch Collective Settlement Act (WCAM). Dr. Van Audenrode’s scientific research and articles have been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals and trade journals. He is a coauthor of the book The Mutual Fund Industry: Competition and Investor Welfare, and is a frequent presenter at industry and academic conferences.
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