CONSPIRE BEFORE YOU HIRE TRIAL

CONSPIRE BEFORE YOU HIRE TRIAL

Prosecutors argued at the trial that DaVita and Thiry conspired with other companies to not solicit each other’s employees from as early as February 2012 until as late as June 2019. Within the past year, however, the DOJ has charged multiple companies and individual executives with crimes similar to those charged against DaVita and Thiry related to alleged anticompetitive conduct in the labor market.Ī trial on the charges against DaVita and Thiry began on April 4, 2022, and was one of the first of its kind. Until recently, the DOJ had not criminally prosecuted any cases related to no-poach agreements. The FTC and DOJ warned that they would prosecute violations both civilly and criminally. More specifically, the guidance stated that “aked wage-fixing or no-poaching agreements among employers, whether entered into directly or through a third-party intermediary, are per se illegal under the antitrust laws.” However, the guidance recognizes that agreements that are ancillary or reasonably necessary to a legitimate collaboration are not per se illegal. The jury did find Jindal, but not Rodgers, guilty of obstruction in that case for obstructing the investigation into the alleged antitrust violations.īy way of background, in October of 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued “Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals.” The guidance stated that agreements among employers to limit or fix the terms of employment for potential employees may violate antitrust laws because companies that compete to hire or retain employees are competitors in the market place for labor. Jindal was the owner of a physical therapy staffing company and John Rodgers was the company’s former clinical director. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on April 14, 2022, found Neeraj Jindal and John Rodgers not guilty of charges of violating antitrust laws for conspiring with competitors to fix employee wages.

In addition to the not guilty verdict for DaVita and Thiry, in USA v. The indictment charged that DaVita and Thiry engaged in criminal conspiracy when they allegedly made agreements with competitors not to solicit each other’s employees. District Court for the District of Colorado found DaVita Inc., a provider of dialysis services, and its former CEO, Kent Thiry, not guilty of criminal conspiracy charges under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

While these verdicts may signal that juries are skeptical of the government’s efforts to criminally prosecute companies or individuals in these labor/employment cases, it is unlikely that the DOJ will cease pursuing these types of matters. Additionally, on April 14, 2022, a federal jury in Texas found the owner of a physical therapy staffing company, Neeraj Jindal, and John Rodgers, a former clinical director of the company, not guilty of criminal charges related to employee wage-fixing.

On April 15, 2022, a federal jury found both DaVita and Thiry not guilty of criminal conspiracy. The trial began that on April 4, 2022, was among the first of its kind since the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued guidance in 2016 stating that the DOJ would prosecute naked no-poaching or wage-fixing agreements. The United States indicted DaVita, Inc., and Kent Thiry, DaVita’s former Chief Executive Officer, last year alleging that they had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by engaging in “Conspiracy in Restraint of Trade to Allocate Employees.” The essential elements of the criminal charges were alleged agreements with competitors not to poach each other’s employees.

Conspire before you hire