Follow-on civil litigation in the wake of Justice Department anticartel investigations is more the rule than the exception, so we weren't too surprised to see an antitrust suit filed against liquid crystal display makers after four LCD makers paid a historic $585 million in criminal antitrust fines last November. Our eyebrows did go up a bit, though, when we saw who the plaintiff is.

Major magazine publishers and distributors have spent years unsuccessfully trying to dodge claims that they conspired to drive the magazine wholesaler Anderson News out of business. Now they want to take the offensive against Anderson with antitrust counterclaims of their own.