CLEVELAND --
Thirty agents who filed an antitrust suit against seven
commission-cutting airlines in U.S. District Court here two years
ago withdrew their lawsuit last week with a view to watching for
outcomes of other similar suits before re-entering the fray.
The Ohio case --
with Timeless Travel in Valley View, Ohio, as lead agency -- is one
of three in which a limited number of named agencies brought action
for damages to their own businesses but without pursuing a class
action.
Marcus Sidoti,
one of the attorneys for the Ohio group, said none of this group of
plaintiffs had opted out of the Sarah Hall class action.
He said carrier
defendants are seeking summary judgments to toss all cases out, in
part on the basis that some agents were pursuing the same case in
two arenas (although the Hall case is now dead).
Sidoti said a few
agents in the other two lawsuits (filed in federal courts in
Beaumont, Texas, and San Francisco) have the opt-out problem,
too.
Their attorneys
may successfully argue that the Hall case and the still-active
cases are not precisely the same, he said.
If the Texas and
California lawsuits are successful, Sidoti said his clients will
not have lost their chance -- they could jump back in seeking
comparable relief.
Meanwhile, they
will save on the cost of litigation, Sidoto said.
To contact
the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Nadine Godwin
at [email protected].