Major Freight Shippers Overcome Novel Railroad Antitrust Defense

The top U.S. freight railroads lost their bid to exclude from evidence about 50 documents in parallel multidistrict fuel price-fixing cases, when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected their interpretation of a law making most discussions about “interline” shipments out-of-bounds in antitrust lawsuits.

“There are more nuanced” approaches than “the blunt remedy of excluding entire documents,” Judge Paul L. Friedman wrote. “Reading the statute this expansively would undercut the principles that” antitrust exemptions and “rules excluding relevant evidence should be strictly construed,” he said.

The better way to ensure the inadmissibility of communications about “interlining” is through narrow redactions ...