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December 16, 2010
COURT APPROVES $850,000 DISTRIBUTION IN U.S.
ANTITRUST LAW CLASS ACTION
The New York Bar Foundation to administer grants
to programs fostering innovation in the technology sector and
entrepreneurship among disabled military veterans
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska has signed an order approving a plan
submitted by class counsel and The New York Bar Foundation for a cy pres
distribution of residual class action settlement funds of approximately
$850,000 in City of Detroit v. Grinnell Corp. (68-cv-4026, 4027, 4028
LAP). The funds are being distributed to The New York Bar Foundation
under the cy pres doctrine, which will provide funding through its
grantmaking program for projects conducted by the University of
Pennsylvania Law School’s Center for Technology, Innovation and
Competition (CTIC) and Syracuse University’s Entrepreneurship
Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV).
Lesley F. Rosenthal (Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary
of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts), Foundation Board director
and chair of its Cy Pres and Restricted Gifts Committee, and Class
Counsel Howard L. Shecter (Reed Smith LLP) and Daniel Berger (Berger
& Montague PC) jointly presented the proposal for distribution to
Chief Judge Preska.
Foundation President M. Catherine Richardson (Bond Schoeneck &
King PLLC, Syracuse) said, “The New York Bar Foundation is very
pleased to receive the cy pres fund distribution from this important
antitrust law class action. The programs to be awarded grants already
have a reputation for excellence and involve accomplished faculty and
scholars. We are proud to have our Foundation collaborating with
Syracuse University to benefit our disabled military veterans and their
families and Penn Law to provide financial support for its research into
technology and innovation policy.”
CTIC at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, founded in 2007,
advances legal and policy research into emerging issues of technology
and innovation. It is committed to presenting balanced programs that
include a full range of scholarly viewpoints from various disciplines
including internet technology, economics, antitrust and intellectual
property law, and medicine. CTIC conducts conferences, workshops and
symposia, focusing its energies on exploring the type of issues that
initially arose in the Grinnell litigation. Over the three-year life of
the new grants, CTIC will hold additional conferences and host
additional visiting scholars and research fellows, as well as conducting
classes and summer research, taking its exploration of these issues to
another level.
Also founded in 2007, the EBV program is designed to leverage the
skills, resources and infrastructure of higher education to offer
cutting edge, experiential training in entrepreneurship and small
business management to post-9/11 U.S. military veterans with
disabilities resulting from their military service. Based on the success
of the program, conducted at Syracuse University’s Whitman School
of Management, a consortium was formed in 2008 as a national educational
initiative, and the EBV program is now offered at five additional
university campuses. The new grants, to be funded over three years, will
enable 35 additional veterans to attend the program free of
charge. The grant monies also will be expended to further develop
curriculum to include a business ethics module and to develop additional
tools to measure EBV program outcomes.
The Grinnell litigation involved several national class actions
consolidated in the Southern District of New York that alleged defendant
companies violated the Sherman Act for purported price fixing among four
service providers in the market for central station alarm services. The
defendant companies utilized telephone voice technology to monitor
burglar, fire and residential alarm systems from a remote central
location. The cases were settled for $10 million in 1971. The protective
services industry, through its rudimentary use of telephone technology,
became a precursor of the information services business, which includes
information technology such as the Internet.
The funds will be used to further the goal of increasing public
understanding of the U.S. antitrust laws and the jurisprudence and
significance of the Grinnell case in U.S. antitrust jurisprudence,
particularly as applied to the information services industry, which the
protective services industry involved in Grinnell helped spawn. The
projects also foster the types of entrepreneurship promoted by U.S.
antitrust laws and are conducted to benefit important groups of worthy
individuals. A cy pres fund includes funds from a class action case that
cannot be distributed to the class members for a number of reasons.
Founded in 1950, The New York Bar Foundation provides financial
support, through its grantmaking program, for law-related charitable and
educational programs that increase public understanding of the law;
improve the justice system and the law; facilitate the delivery of legal
services; and enhance professional competence and ethics. For more
information about The New York Bar Foundation, go to www.tnybf.org, phone 518-487-5651 or
email foundation@tnybf.org.
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Founded in 1876, the 77,000-member New York State Bar Association is
the official statewide organization of lawyers in New York and the
largest voluntary state bar association in the nation. The State
Bar’s programs and activities have continuously served the public
and improved the justice system for more than 130 years. For more
information, visit us at our Web site at www.nysba.org.
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