Spears Manning & Martini Achieves Rule 29 Judgment of Acquittal in Unprecedented Criminal “No-Poach” Prosecution
On April 28, 2023, Spears Manning & Martini attorneys Brian Spears, Leslie Cahill, and Ivan Ladd-Smith achieved a major victory in a criminal prosecution brought by the DOJ Antitrust Division charging six executives of Pratt & Whitney and its suppliers of outsourced engineering services with conspiring to suppress competition in the aerospace industry. The Indictment charged the firm’s client, Mahesh Patel of Pratt & Whitney, with agreeing with five other Defendants from the engineering supplier companies to restrict the hiring and recruiting of engineers and other skilled laborers working on projects for Pratt and Whitney. In other words, the Indictment charged an agreement among the Defendants not to “poach” one another’s employees. Pratt & Whitney is a leading manufacturer of commercial and military jet engines and one of the biggest employers in the State of Connecticut.
At the close of the government’s case, which was tried over a period of nearly four weeks, the defense moved, pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29, for a judgment of acquittal. After several days of briefing and oral argument, United States District Judge Victor Bolden agreed with the defense that the government had not met its burden of proving that the charged agreement to allocate a labor market existed. Contrary to the government’s claim that competition and wages were suppressed, Judge Bolden found that the evidence revealed that “[h]iring among the relevant companies was commonplace, throughout the alleged agreement,” thus precluding a reasonable jury from finding that any agreement between the Defendants constituted a “market allocation” as that term is defined under antitrust law. Judge Bolden accordingly dismissed the case before sending it to the jury.
As reported by Law360, “U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden’s ruling is the first time in decades that criminal antitrust charges have been thrown out under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29 and is the latest blow for U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division efforts to prosecute alleged deals to fix wages or restrict recruitment and hiring, having so far failed to win a single jury conviction on those accusations.”
“I am grateful that justice prevailed for Mr. Patel and that his innocence has been so firmly established,” Brian Spears told the Hartford Courant. “Mr. Patel was a model employee of Pratt & Whitney for 26 years right through the day he retired. He and his family can finally put the nightmare of this prosecution behind them.”
The case is United States v. Mahesh Patel et al, Case No. 3:21-cr-002200, in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.