David Ettinger Email & Phone Number

David Ettinger has led Honigman’s Antitrust and Trade Regulation practice for more than 35 years. He has litigated antitrust cases and represented clients in antitrust matters in a wide variety of industries in more than 30 states. David is to our knowledge the only antitrust lawyer in America to have both successfully challenged and defended mergers on antitrust grounds. (U.S. v. Mercy, Saint Alphonsus v. St. Luke’s.)David has an especially deep involvement in health care antitrust matters, on behalf of hospitals, physician groups and payors. His recent work has included serving as successful lead counsel in the landmark Saint Alphonsus v. St. Luke’s decision (the first litigated antitrust case challenging the acquisition of a physician group). David has also extensively practiced before the FTC, both in defending investigations of health care transactions and advocacy of FTC action against anticompetitive transactions on behalf of our clients. David serves as antitrust counsel for a number of significant hospital systems, including, among others, Trinity Health. This experience allows David, and our antitrust practice group, to provide our health care clients with the most cost effective assistance. For example, while defending many investigations of hospital mergers, we have avoided the need for any of our clients to respond to an expensive “second request” for more than 15 years. Given David’s graduate school training in economics, we are also often able to reduce the need for the use of expensive economic experts.Our work in Saint Alphonsus and other cases also allows us to provide a cutting edge analysis of competitive issues in health care. Our representation of both plaintiffs and defendants allows us to better understand the arguments that could be made against our clients considering transactions, as well as the defenses that could be offered against our clients seeking to challenge anticompetitive conduct.Our work is designed to address real world (not theoretical) risks. We design our strategies to reflect our health care clients’ overall business needs and the complexities of health care markets and regulations.We understand that antitrust issues are only one potential obstacle to our clients’ objectives in completing transactions, and only one potential tool to solve our clients’ competitive issues. Because of our experience in health care, we are able to provide our advice in a larger context that considers a range of business and legal issues.

Listed skills include Litigation, Antitrust And Trade Regulation, Health Care, and Class Actions.