K. Craig Wildfang Honored with National Law Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Robins Kaplan LLP is pleased to announce that K. Craig Wildfang has been selected for The National Law Journal’s (NLJ) Elite Trial Lawyers Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is given to trial attorneys who have demonstrated excellence over their entire career.

Mr. Wildfang is chair emeritus of Robins Kaplan’s Antitrust and Trade Regulation Group. For more than 40 years, he has represented parties in private civil antitrust actions in industries ranging from insurance to agricultural commodities. Mr. Wildfang has championed plaintiffs in several of the most meaningful antitrust cases of the last four decades, including the $5.6 billion settlement in In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Litigation (MDL 1720). This groundbreaking antitrust suit against Visa, Mastercard, and many of the world’s largest banks challenged the ability of Visa and Mastercard and their member banks to collectively set the fees charged to merchants for processing credit card transactions. In March 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit approved the settlement, making it the largest settlement of a private antitrust lawsuit in the 130-year history of the Sherman Act. That capped an 18-year-long litigation campaign conceived and led by Mr. Wildfang.

From 1993 to 1996, Mr. Wildfang served as Special Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. In that position, he was responsible for advising the Assistant Attorney General on the Justice Department's complex civil antitrust litigation, as well as managing certain high-profile cases. Among other matters, Mr. Wildfang directed the Justice Department's efforts in the civil action against Nasdaq securities firms for price-fixing (United States v. Alex Brown & Sons, et al., S.D.N.Y. No. 96 Civ. 5313), and the government's action challenging international anticompetitive intellectual property licenses (United States v. Pilkington PLC, et al., D.Ariz. No. 94-345).

Mr. Wildfang was recognized at a formal ceremony in New York on July 13.