U.S. Travel Agents Drop Antitrust Suit against Airlines

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.