Investigations

GRABAR LAW OFFICE INVESTIGATES UNLAWFUL OVERCHARGES ON BEHALF OF DIRECT PURCHASERS OF HILL-ROM HOSPITAL BEDS

Did you or your company purchase a hospital bed directly from Hill-Rom?

Grabar Law Office is investigating potential antitrust claims on behalf of all direct purchasers of Standard Hospital Beds, ICU Beds, and/or Birthing Beds from Hill-Rom during the past 4 years.

According to a recently filed antirust class action complaint, it is alleged that Hill-Rom, a subsidiary of Baxter International Inc. (NYSE: BAX), on or about January 1, 2013, began a systematic effort to exclude unlawfully competition and increase its hospital bed prices.

According to the class action complaint, by unlawfully exploiting its monopoly power to exclude competition, Hill-Rom has foreclosed would-be rivals from being able to discipline Hill-Rom’s monopoly power and pricing, and thereby Hill-Rom has been able to charge, and has charged, supracompetitive prices to similarly situated hospitals for hospital beds.

Hill-Rom is the dominant supplier of hospital beds in the United States and has been a serial abuser of the antitrust laws. Over the past two decades, Hill-Rom has paid over half a billion dollars to customers, competitors, and the DOJ to settle claims for its repeated, flagrant violations of the antitrust laws as it has aggressively sought to leverage its entrenched hospital bed monopoly through a variety of exclusionary and anticompetitive tactics.

In 2021, an antitrust lawsuit was filed against Hill-Rom by one its competitors, Linet Americas Inc., styled as Linet Americas, Inc. v. Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. et al., 21-cv-6890 (N.D. Ill) (Judge Daniel) alleging that Hill-Rom engaged in unlawful monopolization of the U.S. hospital bed market by using its market power to coerce the hospitals to enter into long-term, exclusive “Corporate Enterprise Agreements” (“CEAs”) that prevent them from contracting with other hospital bed suppliers.

That complaint has survived a motion to dismiss.

According to that lawsuit against Hill-Rom, the hospital bed industry is highly concentrated, with the vast majority of bed sales accounted for by the largest and most dominant supplier, Hill-Rom. That lawsuit asserts that Hill-Rom, via exclusionary and anti-competitive conduct, harmed consumers and impaired competition by depriving Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) and hospitals of choice, lower prices, and superior products and services in the hospital bed, birthing bed, and ICU bed markets, which healthy competition would allegedly have provided.

If you or your company paid for Hill-Rom hospital beds directly from Hill-Rom at any time after June 19, 2020, you may have been overcharged and may be entitled to recover financial damages as well as potentially a court approved service award, if appropriate, at no cost to you.

The beds at issue include: