Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie recently retired from the federal bench, following more than 16 years as a district judge in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, including seven years as the chief judge, and more than eight years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. During that distinguished tenure, Vanaskie issued numerous opinions in two significant and complex antitrust cases that together spanned decades.

Foremost, in the late 1990s and through the 2000s, Vanaskie heard a major antitrust dispute between Santana Products and Bobrick Washroom Equipment and several other defendants (Carl W. Hittinger, the co-author of this article, served as lead counsel to Bobrick in that case).  Santana alleged that Bobrick and other toilet partition manufacturers conspired to enforce a product standard that had the effect of excluding Santana’s toilet partitions from the relevant market. Specifically, Santana alleged that Bobrick and others waged a campaign directed to customers for toilet partitions and the private standard-setting organizations whose testing methodologies and requirements are frequently adopted by state and local governments.  Santana alleged violations of the Sherman Act as well as the Lanham Act related to false and misleading advertising, as well as several state common law business torts.