Josh Mahoney

Representative Antitrust Matters

• Counsel for national real estate brokerage company and related affiliates in multiple pending large-scale antitrust actions involving multiple listing service (MLS) sites and rules promulgated by the National Association of Realtors.
• Counsel for eight affiliated dental health insurance plans in pending consolidated class actions brought by dental providers across the country challenging certain business practices and agreements as anticompetitive under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
• Counsel for pork-processing company in an antitrust conspiracy case alleging an anticompetitive agreement among pork producers to reduce nationwide pork supplies and exchange competitively sensitive information with other pork producers to raise pork prices for all users.
• Deal co-counsel for clients in several recent competitor transactions with deal values greater than $100 million. Work involves developing clean team processes and identifying competitively sensitive information that must be handled appropriately in light of antitrust laws and related enforcement guidance.
• Counsel for national construction company in parallel criminal and civil proceedings brought by federal, state and local authorities stemming from allegations of improprieties related to a large-scale public construction project. Matter settled favorably while avoiding litigation or disbarment proceedings.
• Counsel for large international electronics manufacturer and its U.S. subsidiary in multidistrict litigation spanning more than a decade involving allegations of an international price-fixing cartel in the cathode-ray tube industry, which supplies manufacturing components for television and computer monitor screens.
• Counsel for national insurer in multidistrict litigation proceedings involving several class action lawsuits brought by autobody repair shops accusing insurers of conspiring to suppress reimbursement rates for collision repairs and boycott certain repair shops in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and various state laws. Obtained favorable dismissal of bellwether claims in the MDL, which was affirmed on appeal by the Eleventh Circuit in en banc proceedings.

Representative Commercial & State Dispute Matters

• Counsel for national health care provider in Illinois state court in pending invasion-of-privacy and hostile work environment claims brought by putative class of current and former employees of client clinic. Obtained complete denial of class certification.
• Counsel for global pharmaceutical company in trade secret misappropriation case involving allegations of theft of commercial information. Obtained full defense verdict on summary judgment.
• Counsel for publicly traded major chemical company in dispute involving more than $1 billion in engineering and construction cost defects and overruns at multiple plants. Investigated and prepared board report and litigated matter in private arbitration before reaching successful resolution of all claims.
• Counsel for consumer electronics and technology company as plaintiff in fraud and breach-of-contract case with third-party logistics provider. Case settled favorably after court denied summary judgment to defendant on fraud claims.

At his prior firm, Josh also was trial co-counsel for the State of Georgia in a rare “original jurisdiction” water rights dispute with the State of Florida before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case culminated in a five-week bench trial that resulted in two different Special Master reports and recommendations, each of which rejected Florida’s claim seeking an equitable apportionment of the water flowing from Georgia into Florida. Final victory in the case was achieved in April 2021 after the Supreme Court overruled Florida’s objections to the second Special Master’s report.

Prior Experience

Before joining Faegre Drinker, Josh practiced commercial litigation at another international law firm in Chicago. Prior to practicing, he was a judicial clerk for the Hon. Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer of the Northern District of Illinois and the Hon. Michael J. Melloy of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Josh worked in Faegre Drinker’s Colorado offices before transferring to the Chicago office.

Josh played linebacker for the University of Northern Iowa Panthers football team in college, and led his team and the conference in tackles his junior and senior seasons. He was a two-time Division I Academic All-American and two-time All-Missouri Valley Conference First-Team selection. Following his senior year, he was named an Academic Heisman finalist and received the NCAA Walter Byers Award, which is the NCAA’s highest academic honor and awarded annually to one student-athlete in any sport and division of play.