Baker Botts L.L.P.

Litigation / Antitrust

Partner

Chair - Antitrust Consumer Products

Erik Koons is a Partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice of Baker Botts' Washington, D.C. office. He has more than twenty years of experience representing many of the world's leading companies in bet-the-company antitrust litigations involving the full gamut of competition related claims, including those alleging price fixing, market and customer allocation, monopolization, monopsonization, “sham” patent litigation, tying and bundling. Many of these litigations have involved massive, nationwide class action claims for both direct and indirect purchaser plaintiffs as well as suits brought by state and federal governments. Mr. Koons’ class action defense experience involves claims seeking in the hundreds of millions to over $10 billion in alleged damages. Mr. Koons’ experience has been concentrated in the pharmaceutical, medical device, CPG/FMCG, technology, telecom, chemical, manufacturing, transportation and electronics industries. Mr. Koons devotes a substantial amount of his practice representing companies in internal competition-related investigations and in connection with investigations launched by federal antitrust enforcement agencies and states attorneys general. He regularly counsels corporations on competition-related business matters and designs and implements antitrust compliance programs for clients across the globe.

Mr. Koons was a member of the trial team that received dismissals of six of the seven price-fixing and monopolization charges for McWane, Inc. in an eight-week bench trial against the FTC. The dismissals marked the first time in nearly 20 years that the Commission ruled against itself following an in-house trial in front of the agency’s administrative law judge. The case earned the McWane trial team the award for “Behavioral Matter of the Year- Americas” by Global Competition Review.

Mr. Koons is a sought-after writer and speaker on a wide range of antitrust topics and has authored competition related articles and publications, including as co-author of the recent chapter of “GCR Know How” and co-editor of the ABA’s publication on Obtaining Discovery Abroad, 3rd ed.

Mr. Koons devotes a portion of his practice to pro bono matters involving those who might otherwise lack access to justice. For example, Mr. Koons mounted a constitutional challenge when his client was confined to solitary incarceration for three years as punishment for defending himself against a brutal assault by a prison gang that left the client in the hospital for an extended period. Mr. Koons tried the case before a federal jury in Syracuse, New York and obtained the only verdict of its kind awarding both compensatory and punitive damages to an incarcerated plaintiff seeking compensation against the state.  Mr. Koons has worked on dozens of other pro bono matters involving applications for DNA evidence review in connection to applications for actual innocence and criminal expungement work to rid individuals of the stigmas that often prevent them from obtaining gainful employment.

From 1999-2000, Mr. Koons was clerk to the Hon. Norman A. Mordue, United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of New York.

District of Columbia Bar

New York State Bar

United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fifth and Ninth Circuits

United States District Courts for the Northern, Southern, and Eastern Districts of New York

United States District Court for the Northern District of California

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

J.D., Villanova University School of Law 1998

B.A., Rutgers University 1995 with highest honors Eagleton Institute of American Politics, undergraduate fellow, 1994-1995