Last month, we discussed the antitrust jurisprudence of Neil Gorsuch, currently of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit judge and nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States. Our discussion focused on three of Gorsuch’s opinions during his decade-long tenure with the court of appeals. Even before Gorsuch was nominated to the Tenth Circuit, however, he had already made a name for himself in the antitrust world as a trial lawyer for both plaintiffs and defendants.
In Gorsuch’s early years in private practice at Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evans & Figel, he defended Bell Atlantic in an antitrust case named GTE New Media Services v. Ameritech. The case arose out of allegations that the five regional Bell operating companies “illegally combined and conspired to restrain trade and to monopolize the internet Yellow Pages by controlling internet access points through which competing internet Yellow Pages providers offer their services.” Later, Gorsuch represented so-called “Baby Bell” SBC Communications, a company formed after the breakup of the AT&T Corp. in 1982 pursuant to AT&T’s consent decree with the Department of Justice. In that case, Z-Tel Communications v. SBC Communications, telecommunications carrier SBC Communications was charged with violating the Sherman Act by refusing to provide Z-Tel Communications with access to its telecommunications facilities and equipment as required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Both cases were resolved before trial.
