The Department of Justice (DOJ) is continuing its crackdown on
alleged "no poach" or "wage fixing" market
collusion between competitors.
Last week, DOJ announced charges against four individuals
operating home health care agencies in Maine. According to DOJ, the
four defendants, whose companies are unnamed in the indictment,
agreed to fix pay rates for certain types of employees and not to
hire each other's workers to avoid competition. As a result of
the wage-fixing and no-poach agreements, the indictment charges
each defendant with a single count of felony conspiracy in
violation of Section 1 of Sherman Act.
A Colorado district court also held this week that DOJ's
theory of prosecution in a "no-poach" case passed legal
muster. In USA v. Davita, Inc., et al., the court
held that non-solicitation agreements between competitors were a
form of illegal horizontal market allocation. As to the lack of
precedent on the matter, the court explained that "as
violators
