Arnold & Porter Secures Appellate Victory for Nucor in Steel Antitrust Case

Arnold & Porter successfully represented Nucor Corporation, a domestic steel producer, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in an antitrust case brought against Nucor, AK Steel, and U.S. Steel by competing steel producer JSW Steel.

The claims alleged that Nucor, AK Steel, and U.S. Steel conspired to block JSW’s access to foreign sources of a raw material known as slab through coordinated objections to JSW’s requests to be excluded from the first Trump administration’s 2018 steel tariffs. JSW alleged that the defendants’ objections misrepresented the domestic industry’s ability to supply equivalent slab and that some of them later refused sale of the material, impairing JSW’s ability to compete in downstream steel markets.

The Fifth Circuit panel unanimously affirmed dismissal of the claims, holding that Nucor and its fellow defendants’ petitioning activity was protected under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine and that JSW failed to plausibly allege any non-protected conspiratorial agreement or concerted refusal to deal under the Sherman Act. The court also upheld dismissal of the related state law claims.

The Arnold & Porter litigation team was led by partner Rob Katerberg, who argued the case in the district court and Fifth Circuit, and it included senior counsel James L. Cooper and senior associate, Kolya Glick.