Sidley Secures Significant Victory in Labor-Related Antitrust Class Action

Sidley obtained a complete victory for Wolters Kluwer N.V. and its U.S. subsidiary, Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc., in an antitrust lawsuit challenging the publishing practices of scholarly journals. On January 30, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed all claims under Rule 12 and denied leave to amend. 

The case was brought by a group of academics against the world’s largest for-profit publishers of peer reviewed scholarly journals and their trade association. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated federal antitrust law by conspiring to fix the price of peer review services at zero and to not compete on author manuscripts by barring simultaneous journal submissions and prohibiting the sharing of research during manuscript review. According to the complaint, this conspiracy was enforced through trade association participation and adherence to the association’s ethical guidelines.

Granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss, Judge Hector Gonzalez held that plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege any unlawful agreement under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The court concluded that the challenged “International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication” are nonbinding, aspirational guidelines reflecting best practices in academic publishing and are not enforceable rules restraining competition.

The court also dismissed claims against Wolters Kluwer N.V. and several foreign publisher defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction, rejecting plaintiffs’ attempts to attribute U.S. contacts of domestic subsidiaries to foreign parent companies or to rely on a conspiracy-based theory of jurisdiction. Participation in a trade association, the court held, does not sufficiently establish an antitrust conspiracy. 

The Sidley team representing Wolters Kluwer N.V. and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. was led by Ben Nagin (New York) and Carrie Mahan (Washington, D.C.), and included Nicole Booth (Washington, D.C.) and Jonathan Lesgart (Miami).