Vega Economics and Professor Daniel Spulber from Northwestern University were engaged by a putative class of pharmacies in an antitrust case against Surescripts in In Re Surescripts Antitrust Litigation (N.D. Ill. No. 1:19-cv-06627). The class alleges that Surescripts, the nation’s largest e-prescribing network, has engaged in anticompetitive conduct to foreclose competition and leveraged its monopoly power to overcharge pharmacies for routing prescriptions electronically.
Dr. Spulber was retained to analyze and opine on competition in the e-prescribing markets, or multi-sided networks that exhibit “indirect network effects.” In other words, the value of a network to users on one side depends (indirectly) on how many users are on the other side. Dr. Spulber examined how Surescripts’s exclusionary contracts limited the choices of users on different sides of the network to utilize multiple service providers (i.e., multi-home) and the resulting adverse impact on market competition. Dr. Spulber also proposed a methodology to determine whether and to what extent class members were damaged due to the alleged anticompetitive conduct.
Directed by Dr. Spulber, the Vega team reviewed the contracts and identified exclusionary provisions contained therein. Vega Economics also analyzed thousands of pharmacies that used Surescripts’s network and which of Surescripts’s billions of prescription routing transactions were subject to such exclusionary provisions. As part of supporting Dr. Spulber, the Vega team also analyzed Surescripts’s pricing of e-prescription routing and its economic cost of providing e-prescribing services.
The Vega team supported Dr. Spulber in the preparation of his opening report, his reply to rebuttal reports of Surescripts’s experts’, and his deposition testimony. Vega Economics continues to provide support in this case for Daubert and Summary Judgment motions.