King & Spalding Secures Victory Defeating Class Certification for Tenet and USPI in Antitrust No-Poach Suit with Alleged Exposure of Approximately $2.3 Billion

King & Spalding serves as lead counsel for Tenet Healthcare Corporation and its subsidiaries, United Surgical Partners International, Inc. and United Surgical Partners Holdings, Inc. (“USPI”) in consolidated antitrust class actions in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. This case began as a civil copycat of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (“DOJ’s”) high-profile failed prosecutions of Defendants Surgical Care Affiliates, LLC (“SCA”), DaVita, Inc. (“DaVita”), and DaVita’s former CEO. In January 2021, the DOJ indicted SCA in Texas, alleging that SCA entered into agreements with other employers in the healthcare industry not to solicit proactively each other’s senior employees. Six months later, in July 2021, the DOJ charged DaVita and its former CEO in Colorado with similar conduct. The DOJ aggressively litigated the DaVita criminal case through trial. In April 2022, DaVita and its former CEO secured a complete trial victory when a jury in Colorado acquitted them on all counts. Following that verdict, the DOJ voluntarily dismissed with prejudice the charges against SCA.

In this follow-on civil case, Plaintiffs allege that SCA, DaVita, and USPI entered into agreements not to solicit each other’s senior-level employees and exchanged competitively sensitive compensation information, allegedly suppressing wages in violation of antitrust laws. Following full fact and expert discovery and extensive class certification and Daubert briefing, the Court heard argument on plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, led by King & Spalding’s Veronica Moyé on behalf of all defendants, in May 2026.

On June 10, 2026, the Honorable Sunil R. Harjani denied plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in its entirety, finding that plaintiffs failed to establish a reliable, common method of proving classwide impact or damages and that individualized issues would predominate. The ruling is a significant victory for Tenet and USPI, defeating certification of a proposed class of more than 6,000 senior-level employees and eliminating alleged damages exposure of approximately $2.3 billion. The decision highlights a rare class certification win for defendants in complex antitrust litigation and positions the case for continued merits proceedings on an individual basis. 

The King & Spalding team included Veronica Moyé, Lazar Raynal, Emily Newton, Matthew Dawson, Julianne Duran, Diana Liu, Lauren Smith, Connor Brewer, and Jay Paolillo.