California Still Taking Steps to Advance Criminal Antitrust Enforcement

Kate Patchen’s commentary was included in an MLex article covering how California government officials are seeking to change state law to revitalize the state’s criminal antitrust enforcement program and prepare antitrust enforcers for state criminal prosecutions. The state proposal, Senate Bill 763, would increase criminal fines from $1 million per corporate violation of the Cartwright Act to $100 million per violation. For individual violators, the bill would increase criminal fines from $250,000 to $1 million per violation.

Kate said the proposed bill would bring the financial penalties for violating California antitrust law more in line with penalties for violating federal antitrust law.

Another notable feature of the California bill, Kate noted, is that it would require the money received from payment of any fine or civil penalty for an action initiated and prosecuted by the state attorney general to be deposited into an “Attorney General antitrust account within the General Fund of the State Treasury.” Kate said the proposed statute is designed to help the agency increase its funding for continued antitrust enforcement, which could include criminal antitrust cases. Criminal cases can be labor-intensive and often take an extended time to develop, and California has not yet filed such a case despite announcing intentions to do so more than a year ago.