A UW-Madison professor approached UW-Madison law student Nic Eichenseer about becoming a plaintiff in a recently filed lawsuit against Madison bars, telling him the Minneapolis law firm, Lommen, Nelson, Cole and Stageberg, was in the midst of assembling the suit.
Eichenseer, currently one of the named plaintiffs in the class-action suit filed March 24, is in one of UW Law School Professor Peter Carstensen's classes. Carstensen, an antitrust-law expert, said he spoke with Eichenseer and one or two attorneys, as well as an assistant in the chancellor's office about the legal implications of UW-Madison encouraging a citywide drink special ban.
\I had known there was a drink special ban but I had no idea that it was agreed upon by all the bar owners, and [that], you know, kind of rang the bell that this might be an antitrust issue,"" Eichenseer said. ""A professor at the UW Law School wrote me and said that a firm in Minneapolis was putting together this case, so I contacted the firm and knew that I'd be happy to be a named plaintiff.""
Carstensen said he had not paid much attention to the voluntary ban by 24 downtown bars on Friday and Saturday night drink specials when it was enacted in September 2002 upon encouragement from UW-Madison and as a move to prevent a mandatory ban from the Madison Common Council. He said he would have alerted the university to the legal implications of the ""obvious antitrust problem"" if he had noticed at the time.
""If I had paid enough attention to discover what was going on ... I would have called the chancellor's office and said, 'Hey, do you guys realize that you've got a problem?'"" Carstensen said. ""Whenever I explain the problem in Madison to friends of mine who are antitrust lawyers, their reaction is, 'My goodness! Where were the lawyers? Who was paying attention?'"" he said, adding it was his ""embarrassment"" that he had not previously noticed.
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said the university could have considered the suit possibility before.
""I'm sorry it happened,"" Wiley said of the lawsuit. ""I think it's something that maybe we should have thought of earlier that might be triggered, but at least Professor Carstensen of the law school has started to speak about this. ... We'll see how it plays out.""
Wiley added the lawsuit puts the university in a weakened position to work with the bars.
Eichenseer said he had not previously known UW-Madison junior Brian Dougherty or Janesville resident Eric Stener, who are also named plaintiffs, before he contacted the law firm.
""It's a class-action, it's not my lawsuit,"" Eichenseer said, adding he is just a name on the complaint but representing all affected by the ban.
UW-Madison Political Science Professor Bert Kritzer said how Eichenseer and others heard about the case and joined it will probably not affect the case.
""The reality is, that sort of thing happens all the time, where a law firm, for one reason or another, identifies an issue and then somehow or other secures plaintiffs,"" Kritzer said.
