Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe senior counsel M. Laurence “Larry” Popofsky, who argued a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case that shifted the course of antitrust law, died on May 9. The litigator and former chairman of now-defunct Heller Ehrman was 81.
Popofsky’s victory in Continental Television Inc. v. GTE Sylvania Inc., in which the Supreme Court ruled that business practices must be analyzed under the “rule of reason” legal doctrine, made efficiency and consumer welfare the focus of antitrust analysis, steering that field of law away from the more populist focus that it had previously.
