Kingsfield · Research · Antitrust & Competition

Can a private plaintiff recover triple its damages for an antitrust violation?

Published 2026-06-23 · U.S. federal law

Clayton Act Section 4 lets any person injured in business or property by reason of an antitrust violation sue and recover threefold the damages sustained, plus the cost of suit and a reasonable attorney's fee.

The answer

The private treble-damages remedy

15 U.S.C. § 15 authorizes any person injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws to sue and recover threefold the damages sustained, together with the cost of suit and a reasonable attorney's fee. The remedy is the principal engine of private antitrust enforcement; the trebling is automatic once a violation and antitrust injury are proven.

Standing and injury

Recovery turns on injury to the plaintiff's business or property flowing from conduct the antitrust laws forbid. The provision creates the cause of action and the measure of damages, separate from the statutes that define the underlying violation.

The judged input

What the AI drafted

Submitted to the judge

This is an excerpt from a draft antitrust-risk memo — the kind of work product a lawyer generates with a legal-AI drafting tool, then has to stand behind. Kingsfield does not write it; it rules on the citations the model put in it. This draft cites two authorities; one of them is wrong.

AI draft excerpt — antitrust-risk memo

The Company has asked us to quantify its potential exposure if its conduct is later found to violate the antitrust laws. Under 15 U.S.C. § 15, any person injured in business or property by reason of an antitrust violation may sue and recover threefold the damages sustained, plus the cost of suit and a reasonable attorney's fee. We caution against the view that the treble-damages remedy is supplied by 15 U.S.C. § 2, which we do not read to create the private right of recovery. Because exposure is trebled, even a modest single damages estimate translates into a materially larger judgment, and we advise conforming the conduct to plan immediately.

The judge ruled on every citation as the draft used it — it accepted 15 U.S.C. § 15 and rejected 15 U.S.C. § 2. Here is why.

The verdict

How Kingsfield ruled

Ruled 2026-06-23

Each citation in the draft above was submitted to the Kingsfield judge and ruled against the primary-law corpus — Accept, Reject, or Inconclusive, per citation. These are live verdicts, not editorial. Each card shows the claim the draft made and the verbatim authority the verdict was rendered against.

Accept15 U.S.C. § 15

The draft claimed: Any person injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue and recover threefold the damages sustained, plus the cost of suit, including a reasonable attorney's fee.

“§ 15 Except as provided in subsection (b), any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor in any district court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found or has an agent, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall…”

Cite found; proposition supported by the cited text.

Reject15 U.S.C. § 2

The draft claimed: Section 2 creates the private cause of action allowing an injured person to recover threefold the damages sustained from an antitrust violation.

Cite found, but the cited text does not support the claim. 15 U.S.C. 2 defines the substantive offense of monopolization; the private treble-damages cause of action is created by 15 U.S.C. 15. Regenerate with the correct authority.

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This page is legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. The draft shown is an illustration of a typical AI answer; verdicts reflect the cited authority in the Kingsfield corpus as of the ruling date shown above.