Modern antitrust litigation focuses heavily on trial and pretrial practice, but appellate proceedings can have an inordinate effect on legal doctrine. They present novel challenges, raise unique strategic considerations, and demand niche skillsets, and they often have lasting, widespread implications for consumers’ and small businesses’ ability to prevent and redress anticompetitive conduct. Large defense firms maintain specialized, in-house appellate practices that integrate seamlessly with their trial teams, but economic realities often prevent firms that represent consumers and small businesses from supporting a similar model, giving rise to a resource imbalance.
The AAI Appellate Project seeks to improve the administration of the antitrust laws by strengthening the position of pro-enforcement litigants in antitrust appellate proceedings. The Project bridges the resource gap by bringing together enforcement-minded practitioners, academics, and public interest advocates with appellate antitrust expertise. Volunteer Affiliates of the Project offer to provide support to pro-enforcement litigants by staging moot courts, sharing best practices, and offering access to expert guidance.
The AAI Appellate Project also provides continuing legal education programs for the bar to learn about the challenges and opportunities that arise during antitrust appeals. While the Project focuses principally on appellate litigation, it recognizes that impactful legal issues arise in trial courts as well.
We are grateful for the voluntary contributions of the AAI Appellate Project’s Steering Committee and Affiliates, who comprise many of the nation’s leading appellate antitrust experts. For inquiries about obtaining support from the Appellate Project or becoming an Affiliate, please contact us at aai@antitrustinstitute.org.
Project Steering Committee
Joshua P. Davis
Shareholder, Berger Montague
Research Professor in Residence, UC Law San Francisco
Joshua Davis supervises Berger Montague’s San Francisco Bay Area Office. He focuses his practice on antitrust, appeals, class certification, and ethics. He is one of the leading scholars in the nation on antitrust procedure, class certification, and ethics in class actions and complex litigation. He is also a Research Professor at the University of California San Francisco College of the Law, where he is associated with the Center for Litigation and Courts.
Deborah A. Elman
Partner
Garwin Gerstein & Fisher LLP
Deborah Elman is a partner at Garwin Gerstein & Fisher LLP. With more than two decades of litigation experience, she focuses on representing businesses in high-profile, high-stakes antitrust class actions. She represents institutional clients and individuals in complex civil litigation, including class actions, opt-outs, derivative actions, and arbitrations.
Matthew Summers
Associate
Berger Montague
Matthew Summers specializes in appellate litigation, antitrust litigation, and the intersection of the two. He has argued in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Delaware Supreme Court, and before a panel of the Virginia Supreme Court.
Randy Stutz
President
American Antitrust Institute
Randy Stutz has been a leading antitrust lawyer and competition policy expert for two decades. He has been an advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, testified in Congress, and his work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. He speaks and writes widely on a range of topics involving antitrust enforcement and competition policy.
Katherine Van Dyck
Founder
KVD Strategies PLLC
Katherine Van Dyck has spent her career championing consumer rights, small business interests, and employee protections through strategic litigation and policy advocacy. She is the founder of KVD Strategies PLLC, a senior fellow at Berkeley Law’s Civil Justice Research Initiative, and a senior legal fellow at American Economic Liberties Project.
Project Affiliates
Jennifer Bennett
Principal
Gupta Wessler LLP
Jennifer Bennett is a principal at Gupta Wessler LLP, where she heads the firm’s San Francisco office and focuses on cutting-edge public interest and plaintiffs’-side appellate litigation. Her practice covers a wide range of issues including workers’ rights, consumer protection, civil rights, constitutional law, and government transparency.
John Bergmayer
Legal Director
Public Knowledge
John Bergmayer is Legal Director at Public Knowledge, specializing in telecommunications, media, internet, and intellectual property issues. He advocates for the public interest before courts and policymakers, and works to make sure that all stakeholders—including ordinary citizens, artists, and technological innovators—have a say in shaping emerging digital policies.
Benjamin D. Brown
Managing Partner
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC
Benjamin Brown is co-chair of Cohen Milstein’s Antitrust practice and the firm’s managing partner. He is currently serving as lead or co-lead counsel on a number of large antitrust class actions and competitor cases. Recognized as one of the five hundred leading lawyers in America by Lawdragon, he charts the course of his cases start to finish, deciding on the claims to be brought, the litigation strategy to pursue, and the approach to settlement or trial.
Matthew L. Cantor
Founding Partner
Shinder Cantor Lerner
Matthew Cantor is well recognized as one of the premier antitrust litigators in the country, having led multiple teams in bet-the-business antitrust trials. He has also argued numerous notable antitrust appeals involving issues concerning market definition, market power, standing, evidentiary topics and class certification.
Eric Citron
Partner
Zimmer, Citron & Clarke, LLP
Eric Citron co-founded Zimmer, Citron & Clarke in 2025 after spending a decade at two leading Washington appellate litigation boutiques representing plaintiffs in high stakes litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals.
Eric L. Cramer
Chairman
Berger Montague
Eric Cramer is the Chairman of Berger Montague. He co-chairs the Firm’s antitrust department, and leads multiple antitrust class actions around the United States. Throughout his thirty-year career, he has secured settlements for his clients totaling well over $4 billion.
Jamie Crooks
Managing Partner
Fairmark Partners, LLP
Jamie Crooks brings a wide array of legal and government relations expertise to Fairmark. Prior to co-founding the firm, he practiced law at the international law firm O’Melveny & Myers, LLP. He was a member of the firm’s Appellate & Supreme Court practice, as well as its crisis management and white-collar defense groups.
Alison Deich
Partner
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC
Alison Deich, a partner in Cohen Milstein’s Antitrust practice, is helping lead some of the largest, groundbreaking litigation in the United States, not only in competition law, but also in civil rights and environmental torts. The focus of her antitrust work is challenging anticompetitive practices that suppress wages and harm workers.
Ruthanne M. Deutsch
Founding Partner
Deutsch Hunt PLLC
Dedication to sharp analysis and effective writing have been the constants throughout Ruthanne’s professional life, whether in her previous career as an international development economist, or throughout her many years of practice as an appellate advocate. Her legal experience spans the public, private, and academic clinical sectors, and includes appearances before the Supreme Court of the United States and federal and state appellate courts throughout the country.
Benjamin Elga
Founding Executive Director
Justice Catalyst and Justice Catalyst Law
Benjamin Elga is the founding Executive Director of Justice Catalyst and Justice Catalyst Law, where he works on a wide array of projects, with a focus on impact litigation and innovation in legal practice.
Hannah Garden-Monheit
Senior Fellow
American Economic Liberties Project
Hannah Garden-Monheit is a Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project. She formerly served as Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, where she led development and implementation of competition and consumer protection policy initiatives and advocacy efforts.
Pamela Gilbert
Partner
Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, LLP
Pamela Gilbert has been a named partner in Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, LLP, and its immediate predecessor firm, since 2003. She focuses her practice on government relations matters. She represents a wide variety of clients before Congress, the executive branch and regulatory agencies.
Dan Gustafson
Founding Member
Gustafson Gluek PLLC
Dan Gustafson is a founding member of Gustafson Gluek PLLC. He has dedicated his career to representing individuals and small businesses and giving them a voice in our legal system. Throughout his career, he has fought for plaintiffs against corporate wrongdoers for antitrust violations, deceptive marketing practices, and product defects.
Lee Hepner
Senior Legal Counsel
American Economic Liberties Project
Lee Hepner is a California-based antitrust lawyer and Senior Legal Counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project. He started his career in civil litigation, representing plaintiffs in labor and First Amendment litigation. For the last decade, he has worked in and out of government on policies that address corporate power at the local, state and federal level.
Jeannine M. Kenney
Partner
Hausfeld
Jeannine Kenney is a partner at Hausfeld, and her practice focuses primarily on private enforcement of federal and state antitrust laws. She brings to her legal work nearly two decades of experience in public policy spanning a wide range of legislative and regulatory fields, including agriculture, food safety, telecommunications, and financial services, among others, advocating for the public interest and consumers.
Mark A. Lemley
William H. Neukom Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology. He teaches intellectual property, patent law, trademark law, antitrust, the law of robotics and AI, video game law, and remedies.
Phillip R. Malone
Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Phil Malone joined Stanford Law School’s faculty in July 2013 as the inaugural director of the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic of the Mills Legal Clinic and professor of law. A leading expert in IP, innovation and cyberlaw, he brings to the position nearly a decade of experience in clinical education and another 20 years of antitrust and technology litigation.
Ellen Meriwether
Partner
Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP
Ellen Meriwether has been a partner with Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP since its founding in 1992. She concentrates her practice in the area of antitrust litigation and has held leadership positions in a number of the firm’s important antitrust cases.
Eric A. Posner
Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law
University of Chicago Law School
Eric Posner is the Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago. His research interests include antitrust law, financial regulation, international law, and constitutional law. Professor Posner is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute.
Yaman Salahi
Founder
Salahi PC
Yaman Salahi is the founder of Salahi PC. He represents workers, consumers, and others who have been harmed by corporate or government misconduct. Driven by a desire to effectuate impactful change, he has broad-ranging experience with antitrust, consumer protection, civil rights, and administrative law issues, including in complex class action proceedings and multi-district litigation.
Sandeep Vanheesan
Legal Director
Open Markets Institute
Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads Open Markets’ legal advocacy and research work, including its amicus program. He works on a range of anti-monopoly topics, including antitrust law’s role in structuring labor markets and promoting fair competition.
