Sidley recently secured a victory for Accor Management US Inc. (Accor) in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Judge Robert S. Lasnik granted Accor and the other hotel defendants’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
Plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by exchanging competitively sensitive information through third-party intermediary Smith Travel Research (STR), a division of CoStar Group, Inc., which resulted in higher prices for luxury hotel rooms. The court found that plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege the existence of an agreement to share actual hotel room prices or that STR’s anonymized reports constituted price information within the meaning of antitrust law. The court also found the allegations of parallel conduct and a hub-and-spoke conspiracy insufficient.
The Sidley team was led by Carrie Mahan, and included Benjamin Mundel, Nicole Booth, and Noah Fitzgerel (all in Washington, D.C.); Chloe Larsen (New York); and Robin Wechkin (Seattle). Accor is a long-time client of the firm with Keith Hayden Del Prete (Century City) and Eileen Liu (Chicago) serving as relationship partners.
