Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

Under a proposed settlement, CHS will sell the Riverview Regional Medical Center and all of its associated operations and businesses near Gadsden, Alabama, and the Carolina Pines Regional Medical Center and of its associated operations and businesses near Hartsville, South Carolina, to Commission-approved buyers within six months after the order is issued. The divestitures resolve Commission charges that the combination would likely substantially lessen competition for general acute care (GAC) inpatient services sold to commercial health plans and provided to commercially insured patients in two local markets: 1) Etowah County, including the city of Gadsden, Alabama; and 2) Darlington County, South Carolina.  Absent relief, CHS’s acquisition of HMA would eliminate valuable price and quality competition that has benefitted local patients in these two markets.

An association representing skating teachers agreed to eliminate provisions in its bylaws that the FTC alleged limit competition among the association’s members. In its complaint, the FTC charged that the Professional Skaters Association, through its code of ethics, broadly bans members from soliciting other members’ students, and thereby deprives consumers of the benefits of competition among the 6,400 ice skating teachers and coaches who are members. According to the complaint, the PSA instructed its members that this code provision prohibited coaches from many types of direct and indirect communications with skaters and parents, and actively enforced the ban through a variety of penalties, including suspension, even over the objections of skating students and their parents who wanted to switch coaches. The consent order settling the FTC’s charges requires the Professional Skaters Association to stop restraining its members from soliciting work and competing on the basis of price. It also requires the group to change its code of ethics, publicize its settlement with the FTC, and implement an antitrust compliance program.

An association representing electricians agreed to eliminate provisions in its bylaws that the FTC charged limit competition among each association’s members. The FTC alleged that the purpose and effect of the association's bylaws has been to restrain competition by discouraging and restricting competition among PLASMA members. The consent order settling the FTC’s charges requires PLASMA to revise its bylaws, publicize its settlement with the FTC, and implement an antitrust compliance program.

The FTC required Surgery Center Holdings, Inc., known as Surgery Partners, and Symbion Holdings Corporation, to divest Symbion’s ownership interest in an ambulatory surgery center in Orange City, Florida to Dr. Mark W. Hollmann, as part of a settlement resolving charges that Surgery Partners’ $792 million purchase of Symbion would be anticompetitive. Both companies operate a large number of ambulatory surgery centers located throughout the country that sell and provide outpatient surgical services to commercial health plans and commercially insured patients. The proposed merger would have combined the only two multi-specialty ambulatory surgical centers in the Orange City/Deltona area of Florida, and would have left commercial health plans and commercially insured patients there with only one meaningful alternative to Surgery Partners’ outpatient surgical services.

The Commission challenged Schering-Plough’s proposed $41.4 billion acquisition of Merck & Co., and required divestitures to preserve competition in markets for human and animal pharmaceuticals. The proposed consent order requires that Merck sell its interest in Merial Limited, an animal health joint venture with Sanofi-Aventis S.A., and that Schering-Plough sell its assets related to significant drugs for nausea and vomiting in humans.