US Supreme Court Denies DOJ’s Request to Review Bid-Rigging Case

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a decision from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned the antitrust conviction of a former engineering firm executive accused of participating in a bid-rigging scheme. This ruling leaves in place the lower court’s decision, which cleared Brent Brewbaker, a former executive at Contech Engineered Solutions LLC.

The case stems from allegations that Brewbaker conspired to rig bids for construction contracts awarded by the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Brewbaker was initially convicted in 2022 and sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in the scheme.

According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department (DOJ) had requested that the Supreme Court review the Fourth Circuit’s decision, issued in late 2023, which found that bid-rigging was not always harmful to competition and thus did not automatically qualify as a per se violation of antitrust law. The DOJ argued that such conduct should be evaluated under the per se rule, which presumes harm to competition.

Related: Six Indicted in Federal Bid-Rigging Schemes Involving Government IT Contracts

At issue was the appellate court’s conclusion that the bid-rigging arrangement in this case involved both horizontal and vertical elements, which it argued fell outside the per se rule. Brewbaker’s legal team, represented by Cheshire Parker Schneider PLLC, had previously argued that the alleged behavior should be evaluated under the “rule of reason,” a more flexible test that weighs the potential benefits against harms.

Bloomberg reports that while the district court had initially upheld the per se rule for the bid-rigging conduct, the Fourth Circuit disagreed and ruled that the case did not meet the criteria for such an automatic presumption of anticompetitive effects.

With the Supreme Court declining to intervene, the case now stands as a significant ruling in the ongoing debate about the application of the per se rule in antitrust law.