For over 35 years, Mr. Wilson has been a prominent antitrust attorney. In 1974, he established the State of Maryland’s Antitrust Division, which he headed for five years as Assistant Attorney General and Chief. In 1979 he joined Tydings & Rosenberg LLP, where he has developed and chairs the firm's antitrust practice.
A longtime leader in his field, Mr. Wilson has been a member of the Advis...
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For over 35 years, Mr. Wilson has been a prominent antitrust attorney. In 1974, he established the State of Maryland’s Antitrust Division, which he headed for five years as Assistant Attorney General and Chief. In 1979 he joined Tydings & Rosenberg LLP, where he has developed and chairs the firm's antitrust practice.
A longtime leader in his field, Mr. Wilson has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Bureau of National Affairs’ Antitrust & Trade Regulation Report since 1979. He has been active in the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association, serving as Chairman of the State Antitrust Enforcement Committee (1986-1989) and as an elected member of the Antitrust Section Council (1990-1993). During his government service, Mr. Wilson assumed leadership roles within the National Association of Attorneys General on various subcommittees of the Antitrust and Fiscal Affairs Committee.
Mr. Wilson primarily defends corporations in antitrust, franchising, unfair competition, business tort, trade regulation, and constitutional law litigation.
Representative matters include:
- Substantial amounts of litigation for corporations such as Sun Microsystems, Inc.; McLane Company, Inc.; Mercedes-Benz USA, Inc.; Toyota Motor Sales, USA; The Stroh Brewery Company; Volvo of America Corp.; Tobacco Technology, Inc.; and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Delaware, Inc.;
- Serves as outside general counsel for Tobacco Technology, Inc.;
- Served as antitrust counsel for Sun Microsystems, Inc., in its monopolization suit against Microsoft Corp., in which Sun obtained a landmark settlement of approximately $1.95 billion;
- Successful defense before the United States Supreme Court of the antitrust and Commerce Clause constitutional issues presented by Maryland’s Gasoline Divorcement Law in the landmark case Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U.S. 117 (1978);
- Successful defenses of the constitutionality of several Maryland statutes that regulate various aspects of petroleum distribution;
- Litigation challenging the validity of state sales-below-cost statutes and regulations;
- Antitrust counseling on state, federal, and international issues; and
- Responses to civil investigative demands (CIDs) served by state attorneys general.
Mr. Wilson has lectured and published in the United States and abroad on antitrust and trade regulation issues. He has also testified before Congress on a variety of antitrust issues. His antitrust publications include:
- Co-Author: "Brady v. NFL - Intentional Grounding of an Implied Antitrust Exemption," Antitrust & Trade Regulation Report No. 2507, July 2011;
- Author: “An Unintended Consequence of Leegin,” Antitrust & Trade Regulation Report No. 2310, July 2007;
- Author: “The Spectre of Double Recovery in Antitrust Federalism,” 58 Antitrust Law Journal 201, 1989;
- Author: "Defending an Antitrust Action Brought by a State AG," Antitrust, Winter 1987;
- Co-Author: "Reciprocity and the Private Plaintiff," 32 Maryland Law Review 91, 1972;
- Task Force Chair: "State Merger Enforcement," ABA Antitrust Section Monograph No. 21, 1995; “Antitrust Federalism: The Role of State Law,” ABA Antitrust Section Monograph No. 15, 1988; and
- Associate Editor: State Antitrust Practice and Statutes, American Bar Association Antitrust Section, 1990.
Among the reported cases in which Mr. Wilson has represented governmental and private entities are:
- Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U.S. 117, 98 S.Ct. 2207, 57 L.Ed.2d 91 (1978)
- Burch v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 554 F.2d 633 (4th Cir. 1977)
- Metrix Warehouse, Inc. v. Daimler-Benz Aktiengesellschaft, 716 F.2d 245 (4th Cir. 1983)
- Metrix Warehouse, Inc. v. Daimler-Benz Aktiengesellschaft, 828 F.2d 1033 (4th Cir. 1987)
- G. Heileman Brewing Co., Inc. v. Stroh Brewery Co., 843 F.2d 169 (4th Cir. 1988)
- Trimed, Inc. v. Sherwood Medical Co., 977 F.2d 885 (4th Cir. 1992)
- Keener v. Exxon Co., USA, 32 F.3d 127 (4th Cir., 1994)
- In Re: Microsoft Corp. Antitrust Lit., 333 F.3d 517 (4th Cir. 2003)
- Governor of Maryland v. Exxon Corp., 279 Md. 410, 372 A.2d 237 (1977)
- Attorney General v. Anne Arundel County School Bus Contractors Ass’n, Inc., 286 Md. 324, 407 A.2d 749 (1979)
- Cities Service Co. v. Governor, State of Md., 290 Md. 553, 431 A.2d 663 (1981)
- G. Heileman Brewing Co., Inc. v. Stroh Brewery Co., 308 Md. 746, 521 A.2d 1225 (1987)
- Cities Service Oil Co. v. Burch, 29 Md. App. 430, 349 A.2d 279 (1975)
- Comptroller of the Treasury v. Crown Central Petroleum Corp., 52 Md. App. 581, 451 A.2d 347 (1982)
- Burch v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 420 F.Supp. 82 (D.Md. 1976)
- In re: Montgomery County Real Estate Antitrust Litigation, 452 F.Supp. 54 (D.Md. 1978)
- Sun Oil Co. of Pennsylvania v. Goldstein, 453 F.Supp. 787 (D.Md. 1978)
- Genex Corp. v. G.D. Searle & Co., 666 F.Supp. 755 (D.Md. 1987)
- Purity Products, Inc. v. Tropicana Products, Inc., 702 F.Supp. 564 (D.Md. 1988)
- Sun Dun, Inc. of Washington v. Coca-Cola Co., 740 F.Supp. 381 (D.Md. 1990)
- Sun Dun, Inc. of Washington v. Coca-Cola Co., 770 F.Supp. 285 (D.Md. 1991)
- Trimed, Inc. v. Sherwood Medical Co., 772 F.Supp. 879 (D.Md. 1991)
- Stroh Brewery Co. v. Allegany Beer Dist., 989 F.Supp. 740 (D.Md. 1996)
- In Re: Microsoft Corp. Antitrust Lit., 232 F.Supp. 2d 534 (D. Md. 2002); 237 F.Supp. 2d 639 (D. Md. 2002); 240 F.Supp. 2d 460 (D. Md. 2003); 274 F.Supp. 2d 741 (D. Md. 2003); 274 F.Supp. 2d 747 (D. Md. 2003)
Mr. Wilson has been selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2012 in the fields of Antitrust and Government Relations Law. He has been selected for inclusion continuously since 2007. (Copyright 2010 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.)
Since 2007, Mr. Wilson has been named by Maryland Super Lawyers as one of the top attorneys in Maryland for his antitrust litigation practice. Mr. Wilson is AV® Peer Review Rated – the highest possible peer review rating from Martindale-Hubbell.
Mr. Wilson is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and his biography appears in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. He is married to Deborah Lockhart Wilson.
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