Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Honorable Bernard M. Decker, United States District Judge

In more than forty separate antitrust actions brought in eight judicial districts, plaintiffs, state and local governments, public schools, and public libraries, sought damages from twenty-three defendants (petitioners here), publishers and wholesalers, for alleged conspiracies to inflate the prices for children’s editions of library books. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407 these actions were transferred for consolidated discovery and pretrial proceedings to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, the Honorable Bernard M. Decker, presiding.…