Foley & Lardner LLP partner Benjamin Dryden is quoted in the Law360 article, “JetBlue-Spirit Ruling Casts Uncertainty Over Airline Deals,” discussing the decision by a Massachusetts federal court to block the proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit Airlines.
Assessing the ruling, Dryden, who is vice-chair of Foley’s Antitrust & Competition Practice, commented that the judge’s “even-handed approach carries throughout the whole decision.”
Dryden said the opinion is surprising in many ways. He explained that the court rejected the government’s argument that the merger was presumptively anticompetitive based on concentration statistics alone, finding instead that both competitive entry was likely and that combining JetBlue with Spirit would create more vigorous competition with the Big Four airlines.
“Normally, any of those findings would suggest a judgment for the defendants. But that’s not what the court did,” Dryden noted. “Instead, the court was moved by the government’s arguments about the experience of the ‘average Spirit consumer’ — a college student or a large family that can only afford to fly on an ultra-low-cost carrier — and held that this segment of the market would be harmed by losing Spirit as an independent alternative.”
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