Reed, et al. v. Advocate Health Care, et al.

In this alleged price-fixing class action, a plaintiff class of registered nurses in the Chicago, IL area alleged that defendant hospitals in Chicago conspired to suppress nursing wages. Compass Lexecon expert Bobby Willig, supported by Susan Manning, Elizabeth Wang, Bryan Keating, Meg Guerin-Calvert, and Compass Lexecon teams in Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA, testified on behalf of the defendants on class-wide impact and damages. 

In one of the strongest endorsements of expert testimony in recent memory, the Court heavily relied upon, and repeatedly cited Professor Willig’s testimony, particularly with regard to the lack of common evidence of class-wide impact and damages, and the flaws in plaintiffs’ expert’s economic model, which the Court harshly criticized and completely rejected. Accordingly, the Court did not certify the proposed class because the plaintiffs’ expert had not shown that common evidence could establish impact and assess damages on a class-wide basis. 

We worked with Scott Perlman and Bob Bloch of Mayer Brown; David Marx, Jr. and David Hanselman of McDermott Will & Emery; Michael Shakman, Diane Klotnia, and Edward Feldman of Miller Shakman & Beem LLP; Jim Calder and Martin Tully of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP; Chris King and Margo Weinstein of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP; and Tim Haley of Seyfarth Shaw LLP.