DENVER — DaVita, Inc. and its former leader, Kent Thiry, did not conspire to illegally restrict competition for DaVita's employees, a jury decided on Thursday in acquitting the defendants of three federal criminal charges.
The trial marked the first time the U.S. Department of Justice had prosecuted a "gentlemen's agreement" between cooperate executives to place some or all employees off-limits for recruitment to other companies. The department's Antitrust Division had argued that the intent of those agreements was to keep DaVita employees at DaVita and extinguish all meaningful competition for their labor.
The government had painted Thiry as incensed that his own DaVita executives would go on to lead other companies and attempt to recruit their former colleagues, so much so that Thiry "bullied" them into agreements not to solicit DaVita employees.
"He couldn’t stand the idea that some of his employees might prefer to work for someone else. So he shut that competition down. That was his purpose," Justice Department attorney Anthony Mariano told the jury during closing arguments.
>Read the full article at Colorado Politics.
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