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K. Heidi Smucker

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Heidi Smucker is an associate in Baker McKenzie's North America Antitrust and Competition Practice Group in Washington, DC. Having worked for the Federal Trade Commission, Heidi has gained knowledge from an insider’s perspective on a wide variety of antitrust matters, including mergers and acquisitions, HSR investigations, and second request compliance. Prior to joining Baker McKenzie, Heidi was a staff attorney at the Federal Trade Commission in the Bureau of Competition, where she worked on matters involving microprocessors, silicon technologies, and industrial chemicals and commodities. During law school, Heidi served as Senior Articles Editor for the Administrative Law Review and competed in the International Trademark Association’s Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition. She also worked as a research assistant for Professor Elizabeth Earle Beske and spent a summer clerking for The Honorable Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

On 20 May, the US District Court for the Central District of California affirmed a seven-figure jury verdict and granted a permanent injunction in a rare Robinson-Patman Act decision. The RPA is an antitrust statute that prohibits certain kinds of price discrimination in goods purchased for resale. The case, LA International Corp. v. Prestige Brands Holdings, was pursued by a group of local wholesaler plaintiffs that claimed a defendant eye drop manufacturer and its subsidiaries sold the plaintiffs eye drops on less favorable terms than the defendant’s club store wholesale customer.

On 27 June 2023, the Federal Trade Commission, with the concurrence of the Assistant Attorney General for the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, announced proposed changes to the premerger notification form and associated instructions and rules that implement the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. The proposed changes represent an expansion and reorganization of the information collected on the HSR form.