On August 7, 2012, Judge Means of the Northern District of Texas denied Sabre, Travelport, and Orbitz’s (“defendants”) motions to dismiss American Airlines’ complaint. (Opinion available here (it was recently unsealed).) In the case, American Airlines claims that Sabre and Travelport unlawfully wield monopoly power in the market for the distribution of airlines fare, flight, and availability information and the provision of booking services to travel agents. “In addition, American allege[s] that Sabre and Travelport, along with Orbitz and other unnamed industry participants, had engaged in an industry-wide conspiracy to preserve the[ir] monopoly power.” Furthermore, “[a]ccording to American, the defendants have conspired to preserve [their preferred] model and to exclude American’s ‘AA Direct Connect’ from the [m]arket and submarkets. AA Direct Connect is a method of providing airline information and booking services directly to travel agents without having to go through [the defendants].”
Judge Means found, among other things, that American stated a plausible conspiracy-to-monopolize claim, adequately plead the existence of a conspiracy, and alleged facts sufficient to support a reasonable inference that Sabre and Travelport have been working together to exclude AA Direct Connect from the market and submarkets. Accordingly, Judge Means denied defendants’ motions to dismiss.
American Airlines is represented by Paul Yetter, George Fibbe, Anna Rotman, of Yetter Coleman LLP; Allen Blaustein, Christopher Pace, Eric Hochstadt, James Quinn, Marc Weinroth, Michelle Hartmann, Richard Rothman, Robert Berezin, and Yolanda Garcia, all of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP; Bill Bogle and Roland Johnson, both of Harris Finley & Bogle; Grace Kwon and Marc Schildkraut, both of Cooley LLP; and MJ Moltenbrey and Robert Zuver, Jr., both of Paul Hastings.
Travelport is represented by John Schriver and Paul Chronis, both of Duane Morris LLP; and Michael Cowie, Carolyn Feeney, Craig Falls, Justin Pentz, and Michael Weiner, all of Dechert LLP; Christian Tucker and Walker Friedman, all of Friedman Suder & Cooke; and Faith Gay, Karin Kramer, Patrick Doolittle, and Steig Olson, all of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.
Orbitz is represented by Christopher Yates, Brendan McShane, and Daniel Wall, all of Latham & Watkins LLP; John Little, of Little Pedersen Fankhauser LLP; and Megan Dredla and Stephen Gleboff, both of Gleboff Law Group PLLC.
Sabre is represented by Scott Fredricks and Philip Vickers, both of Cantey Hanger LLP; Andrew MacNally, Andrew Polovin, Chris Lind, Donald Scott, Karma Giulianelli, Katherine Swift, Sean Grimsley, and Sundeep Addy, all of Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP; and George Cary, Kenneth Reinker, Larry Work-Dembowski, and Steven Kaiser, all of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.