In the past few years, courts and the Department of Justice have cit-ed approvingly the Supreme Court’s dicta in Verizon Communications Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP. This Article analyzes why the economic thinking in Trinko is wrong, and how the Court ignores its precedent involving the Sherman Act’s concerns regarding monopolies’ political, social, and ethical implications. It responds to the Court’s claim that cartel behavior is easier to identify and remedy than monopo-listic behavior and proposes an improvement to the Court’s current rule of reason standard to reduce the risk of false positives, while enabling the antitrust agencies and courts to remedy certain monopolistic conduct more quickly.
The full text of this Article is available to download as a PDF.