US: Conway hires antitrust lawyers to help in petroleum case

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s office has hired two outside law firms with antitrust expertise to help with its lawsuit against Marathon Petroleum LP over gasoline prices in Louisville and Northern Kentucky.

Conway also plans to revive a separate, eight-year-old suit against Marathon – the primary wholesale supplier of gas to the state – which alleges the company illegally jacked up prices in the wake of hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005.

The firms – Strauss Troy Co. of Cincinnati and Boies, Schiller & Flexner of New York – were hired in June to work on both cases against Marathon, according to a contract obtained by WDRB News under the Kentucky Open Records Act.

Conway, the Democratic nominee for governor, announced May 12 that he had filed a federal lawsuit accusing Marathon of exploiting a monopoly over wholesale gasoline in the Louisville and Northern Kentucky markets.

Marathon, of Findlay, Ohio, supplies more than 90 percent of cleaner-burning reformulated gas, or RFG, that must be sold in Louisville and Northern Kentucky, and the company has maintained that dominant position through a handful of anti-competitive practices, the suit charges.

Full content: Louisville Business First

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