June 26, 2026, 12:32 GMT | Insight
The US judicial system would do well by establishing rules that move along antitrust lawsuits more quickly instead of letting them drag on for years, Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson told MLex.
"I think that it would be good for the system to have rules of civil procedure that moved conduct cases along more quickly than they do," Ferguson told MLex in an interview.
"[Federal] Rules of Civil Procedure adjustments or case management orders that move these cases along more quickly would not require a complete reconsideration of the antitrust laws [by the
US Congress], but would reduce the expense of enforcement both to the government and to parties that are subject to enforcement," he said.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern the procedure in all civil actions and proceedings in the US district courts.
The FTC Chair was answering a question on if he could change one aspect of US antitrust law or policy without needing a Congressional sign off, what would that be and why.
For instance, the
US Department of Justice's lawsuit against
Google over illegal conduct in the digital advertising technology markets went through a liability trial in less than two years after being filed in January 2023. After Google was found liable on multiple counts, a separate remedy trial followed within a year at the
Eastern District of Virginia. Ferguson, who was Solicitor General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, took the lead on behalf of 17 states to bring the lawsuit with the DOJ.
Similarly, the FTC's lawsuit against
Zillow and Redfin of illegally conspiring to limit competition in the market for rental advertising offering was filed in September 2025 and will head to trial in August also at the Eastern District of Virginia.
Ferguson described the two cases as having "incredible pace."
"I mean, that's like record-breaking pace for case of this kind," he said.
The Eastern District of Virginia is known as the "rocket docket" for its speedy disposition of cases.
Ferguson compared the swift pace of those two cases with that of another DOJ monopolization case against Google over illegal internet search market practices. The Google search complaint was filed in October 2020 and is currently being appealed at the US Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit.
"Civil procedure rules can be added by Congress, but under the Rules Enabling Act of 1934, the courts get to write the rules, and then present it to Congress basically for veto, and if they don't veto, they become rules. You could have standard case management orders and antitrust cases that require faster movement," the FTC Chair said.
The Rules Enabling Act of 1934 is a foundational federal statute that granted the
US Supreme Court the authority to establish uniform rules of practice, procedure, and evidence for the federal courts.
Merger cases too move very quickly, even when they are intensely complicated, Ferguson said.
The FTC's challenge to the merger between Kroger and Albertsons was "an intensely complicated case" that required the agency to onboard the sort of retail data that it would normally have to onboard in a big Section 2 monopoly case because it was all about predictive retail prices. "We did that [case] in nine months, [at an] incredible pace, and that is because judges entered case management orders that required everyone to move quickly," he said.
"I think it would be good basically to try to get conduct cases to move at the pace of merger cases, even if that meant that parties don't get to do 12 expert reports, and they have to reach agreement on discovery more quickly than they might otherwise do it," Ferguson said.
"Look, I think this is probably not great for the defense bar, because their ability to prolong these cases is great for lawyers, but it'd be great for the companies that are subject to the litigation, because they don't want to have to have these things drag on and on and on and pay out the nose for five law firms to handle one case indefinitely," he said.
"There's no way that Google enjoyed being having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for two giant Section 2 cases that lasted from 2021 to the present and are still going, and that if they have to endure those type of cases, I'm sure they'd much prefer that they go three years rather than six," the FTC Chair said.
— Additional reporting by Mike Swift.
Please email editors@mlex.com to contact the editorial staff regarding this story, or to submit the names of lawyers and advisers.
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