US: Poly announces Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued on antitrust litigation

Plantronics (Poly), a global communications company, today issued the following statement:

“Today, a panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied GN Netcom’s request for the entry of default judgment in its favor in its antitrust case against Plantronics.  GN previously filed an antitrust lawsuit against Plantronics alleging anticompetitive conduct. In October of 2017, after approximately an hour of deliberations, a jury in Delaware federal court rejected GN’s claims and unanimously found in favor of Plantronics.

GN appealed the jury’s decision and further contended that default judgment on the merits of its case should be automatically entered in GN’s favor because certain Plantronics emails from several years ago could not be recovered or otherwise restored.  Today, a panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously denied GN Netcom’s request for default judgment.

In a 2-1 decision, with the Chief Judge of the Court dissenting, the majority of the panel did find that the District Court below should have permitted the testimony of one of GN’s witnesses and ordered a new trial.  The Chief Judge, on the other hand, found that the District Court properly addressed the issue at trial.