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Date Set for Landmark Suit for IRI
Last week, a U.S. District Court judge set a trial date of September 20, 2004 in Information Resources, Inc.'s antitrust lawsuit against ACNielsen (now owned by VNU), The Dun & Bradstreet Corp., and IMS International, in which IRI is seeking damages in excess of $1 billion after trebling. The jury trial in this case is scheduled to last between ten and sixteen weeks.
'This is a landmark lawsuit, both in terms of the scope of the illegal activities and the potential size of the judgment. It involves well-orchestrated worldwide anticompetitive practices by ACNielsen designed to monopolize the markets for retail tracking services by crippling IRI,' said David Boies, of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, L.L.P., who will try the case for IRI.
In separate proceedings, the Canadian Competition Tribunal and the European Commission already have found that these same practices by ACNielsen were abusive and either prevented IRI from entering markets or artificially raised the costs of doing so.
'We are very encouraged that a trial date has been set. We now have a specific date on which we will be able to tell our story and present our evidence to a jury in United States federal court,' said IRI Chairman and CEO Joe Durrett.
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