Draft Antitrust Complaint

Skill: Federal Antitrust Complaint Drafting

1. Subject-matter triage

• Identify the operative plaintiff(s), defendant(s), relevant product and geographic market(s), challenged conduct, and requested relief before drafting any count.
• Determine whether the theory is best pleaded as unlawful agreement, monopoly maintenance/acquisition, attempted monopolization, exclusive dealing, or another exclusionary-restraint theory.
• If the source set implicates more than one market, period, customer channel, or exclusionary practice, enumerate them first and draft the complaint so each can be pleaded with its own factual predicates.
• Preserve a complaint posture: plead facts, not argument, and present the narrative as a chronology of conduct, market response, and injury.

2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

• Baseline makes conclusory anticompetitive allegations without tying them to document categories, dates, authors, recipients, or topics that make the inference plausible.
• Baseline states market power, foreclosure, or injury as labels rather than pleading the facts that support them.
• Baseline lumps distinct restraints, periods, or markets together, which obscures element-by-element pleading and weakens Rule 12(b)(6) survivability.
• Baseline omits the market-definition facts needed to show why substitutes, channels, or counterparties do not constrain the defendant.
• Baseline pleads damages or injury in a way that is untethered to antitrust injury and the requested remedy.
• Baseline recites legal conclusions without naming the governing statute, rule, or case authority that supports each proposition.
• Baseline fails to translate source documents into complaint-ready allegations at a categorical level, leaving the pleading vulnerable to attacks as speculative.

3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

• Rule 12(b)(6) and plausibility: plead nonconclusory facts that, accepted as true, make each element of each claim plausible.
• Sherman Act § 1: plead concerted action, the nature of the restraint, and facts showing anticompetitive effect; identify whether the restraint should be analyzed under per se or rule-of-reason principles based on the conduct alleged.
• Sherman Act § 2: plead monopoly power or dangerous probability of achieving it in a relevant market, plus exclusionary or predatory conduct that maintains, acquires, or attempts to obtain that power.
• Antitrust injury and standing: plead injury of the type the antitrust laws were designed to prevent, flowing from the challenged conduct and linked to the plaintiff’s role in the market.
• Market definition: allege product and geographic boundaries with facts about interchangeability, cross-elasticity, customer switching, distribution constraints, and commercial realities.
• Exclusionary conduct: pleading may rely on facts showing loyalty restraints, exclusive dealing, retaliation, discriminatory access, pricing restrictions, access denials, or other conduct that forecloses rivals and impairs competition on the merits.
• Causation and damages: if monetary relief is sought, plead a coherent injury theory and a method for estimating harm tied to the alleged antitrust violation.
• Relief: tailor requested injunctive, declaratory, structural, and monetary relief to the theory and harm pleaded.

4. Analytical scaffolds

1. Build the complaint from source-document categories, not isolated quotations: identify internal emails, board materials, pricing records, customer complaints, public filings, analyst materials, and witness materials that support each allegation.
2. For every legal proposition, anchor the pleading to controlling authority by name and section or case name, and tie the authority to the proposition being advanced.
3. Draft the factual background chronologically so the complaint shows how the challenged conduct developed, how the market reacted, and how rivals or customers were affected.
4. Plead market definition with factual reasons substitutes do not discipline the challenged conduct, then connect that market to market power or dangerous probability.
5. For each count, state the theory, allege the supporting facts, and connect those facts to each required element in complaint form.
6. Where multiple restraints or exclusionary practices are alleged, separate them into distinct factual subsections and distinct counts only where doing so clarifies the element-by-element theory.
7. When damages are requested, plead the injury mechanism first, then the method of proof or estimation, then the relief sought; avoid unsupported arithmetic or premature precision.
8. If the source documents suggest ongoing conduct, frame the requested relief to stop future harm as well as redress past injury.

5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

• Use a vertical structure that moves from jurisdiction and parties, to market definition, to factual background, to counts, to damages and relief.
• Keep each count self-sufficient: repeat the key market, power, conduct, and harm facts needed for that theory rather than relying on incorporation by implication alone.
• Maintain temporal clarity by identifying when the challenged conduct began, intensified, changed form, or produced competitive effects.
• Where conduct affects multiple layers of the distribution chain, plead the relationship among manufacturer, distributor, retailer, and customer in a way that shows how foreclosure or exclusion travels through the channel.
• If there are parallel theories under §§ 1 and 2, distinguish the conduct supporting agreement from the conduct supporting exclusionary maintenance or attempted monopolization.
• Make sure any requested structural or forward-looking relief matches the durability and scope of the alleged harm.

6. Output structure conventions

• Caption and jurisdictional allegations
• Parties section
• Relevant market allegations
• Factual background with source-linked document categories and chronological detail
• Separate claims or counts organized by antitrust theory, each pleading the governing authority and element-by-element facts
• Damages, antitrust injury, and method of proof, if monetary relief is sought
• Prayer for relief seeking appropriate monetary, injunctive, declaratory, and where warranted structural relief
• Draft in complaint style, with numbered paragraphs, direct allegations, and exhibit references where helpful
• Keep allegations concrete and source-anchored at a categorical level; do not rely on legal labels standing alone
• Ensure the pleading reads as a standalone federal complaint that can survive a Rule 12(b)(6) challenge on its face