Survey of injunctive relief under state and federal antitrust laws

Relatively little has been written about equitable relief under state and federal antitrust laws.1 Equity power in antitrust enforcement means much more than the mere power to restrain a defendant from doing an act for which the plaintiff has no "remedy at law," to order a defendant to remove a nuisance disturbing some equitably recognized right of a plaintiff, or to restrain a defendant from using his property in a manner which will interfere with another's rights. In antitrust, the proverbial chancellor's foot has grown to truly vast proportions. Antitrust equity jurisdiction entails a language all its own: consent decrees, divestiture, dissolution, and divorcement. Equitable relief in an antitrust case may well extend beyond the point of economic correction to become, in effect, economic regulation of an entire industry or segment thereof for several generations. Concurrent with the grant of equity power in antitrust is the power of the government to proceed criminally.