Keller Postman LLC Appointed Co-Lead Class Counsel in ‘Most Favored Nation’ Antitrust Class Action Against Amazon

National plaintiffs’ law firm Keller Postman LLC has been appointed Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel by Judge Ricardo S. Martinez in De Coster et al. v. Amazon.com Inc.—an antitrust class action on behalf of Amazon customers who paid inflated prices because of the ‘most favored nation’ pricing restrictions the tech giant imposed on third-party merchants.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the suit alleges that Amazon’s unlawful use of ‘most favored nation’ pricing restraints blocked competition from third-party merchants and other online retail platforms, resulting in customers’ paying supra-competitive prices. Those restrictions barred third-party merchants from listing products anywhere on the internet at prices lower than their Amazon list prices.

“The plaintiffs’ allegation is that Amazon has exploited its market power to inflate prices on its own platform—and across the internet. Given the scale of this antitrust violation, the suit has the potential to be one of the largest antitrust cases in history,” said Keller Postman Partner Zina Bash, who leads the Keller Postman team in this matter.

A recent suit by the District of Columbia Attorney General parallels this antitrust class action; that D.C. suit is the sixth antitrust case brought by a government enforcer against a major tech platform in the past year.

Alongside Keller Postman, the court appointed Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP as Co-Lead Counsel, and it named Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Keller Rohrback LLP to the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee.

The plaintiffs are represented by Zina Bash, Warren Postman, and Albert Pak of Keller Postman; Steve Berman and Barbara Mahoney of Hagens Berman; Adam Wolfson, David Du LeRay, Nicolas Vernon Siebert, Steig David Olson, and Alicia Cobb of Quinn Emanuel; and Derek W. Loeser of Keller Rohrback.

– – –

*As of April 2022, the firm has changed its name from Keller Lenkner to Keller Postman.