Brian Albrecht on FTC’s Legal Hurdles in Meta Antitrust Appeal
Brian Albrecht, ICLE Chief Economist, was quoted in a Law360 article examining the steep legal hurdles the FTC faces in reviving the antitrust case against Meta, particularly the difficulty of persuading an appeals court that the district judge committed a “clear error” in rejecting the agency’s market definition. Read the full article here.
To win, the FTC would need to show the Boasberg made a ‘clear error,’ like that he applied the wrong framework for defining markets, demanded a type of proof that antitrust law doesn’t require, or dismissed relevant evidence for legally improper reasons,” said Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics, a think tank that was critical of the case. “The difficulty is that Boasberg’s opinion, by most accounts, engaged seriously with the standard antitrust tools, legal and economic. He found the FTC’s market definition unconvincing after weighing the evidence, not on a technicality. Convincing the D.C. Circuit that this was a clear error, that’s the standard, rather than a reasonable judgement call, is a heavy lift.”