In re: Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Corp. Antitrust Litigation

Date Filed: August 7, 2007
Status: Pending
District Court: N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division – Case No. 1:07-cv-4446
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Defendant Type: Provider
Plaintiff Type: Private
Court Document: https://dlbjbjzgnk95t.cloudfront.net/0838000/838643/https-ecf-ilnd-uscourts-gov-doc1-067118037454.pdf

In this putative class action, end-payors who purchased inpatient or outpatient healthcare services accused Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, now known as NorthShore University System, of violating Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act by illegally monopolizing the healthcare services market and using its resulting leverage to artificially inflate prices paid by Plaintiffs and the putative class.

The lawsuit, currently pending in federal district court in the Northern District of Illinois, represents the first private class action antitrust lawsuit brought as a result of a (13-year-old) hospital merger. The enforcement action stemmed from the 2000 acquisition of Highland Park Hospital by rival Evanston Northwestern HealthCare Corp. Four years after the completion of the merger, the FTC announced that it had filed a retroactive administrative complaint, alleging that the merger had significantly lessened competition for general acute care hospital services in Chicago’s north shore area. Find the FTC case summary and related documents here. The class action complaint was filed in 2007, and the class certified in December 2013.

NorthShore’s motion to dismiss was denied in September 2016. NorthShore then filed a motion to decertify the class. On March 31, 2018, the district court judge agreed with NorthShore that plaintiffs did not warrant class certification due to inadequate class representative, but gave the plaintiffs time to find another representative. On June 28, 2018, the district court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to add two new proposed class representatives. Read more on the Source blog.


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