Daniel McCuaig

Dan McCuaig is a partner in Cohen Milstein’s Antitrust practice, where he represents a broad range of individual and class plaintiffs pressing antitrust claims in civil litigation. He also is an antitrust thought leader who regularly writes and speaks on cutting edge competition issues and recently served on Law360’s Competition Editorial Advisory Board.

Dan currently plays a managing role in several cases challenging collusion and monopolization, including In re da Vinci Surgical Robot Antitrust Litigation (on behalf of hospitals and other purchasers of robotic surgery instruments), Iowa Public Employees Retirement System, et al. v. Bank of America Corp., et al. (on behalf of pension funds and other counterparties of major prime brokers in securities lending transactions), and In re Visa Debit Card Antitrust Litigation (on behalf of merchants that accept Visa debit cards). Dan also led the Cohen Milstein team that joined forces with Quinn Emanuel to win a jury trial verdict in excess of $330 million (after trebling) in Pacific Steel Group v. Commercial Metals Company in late 2024.

Immediately prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Dan was a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for more than a decade. There, he led investigation and litigation teams in both criminal and civil matters related to price fixing, bid rigging, anticompetitive mergers, and other antitrust law violations. 

As a criminal prosecutor at the DOJ, Dan led the investigation and prosecution of antitrust, fraud, and obstruction of justice claims against corporations and individuals. He was the principal trial attorney in related plea hearings, sentencings, and before grand juries, and successfully generated significant charges and guilty pleas. While carrying out his prosecutorial duties, Dan continued to provide expertise on major Antitrust Division civil actions, such as its successful challenge to the proposed merger between Anthem and Cigna—in which Dan cross-examined Anthem expert economist Robert Willig at trial. 

While a civil litigation trial lawyer at the DOJ, Dan oversaw the government’s investigation into the e-books price-fixing conspiracy litigated in In re Electronic Books Antitrust Litigation, involving Apple and five major publishers, and played a principal role in the government’s successful trial of Apple. Leading up to that trial, Dan coordinated with foreign enforcement agencies, 33 state attorneys general, and private plaintiffs’ counsel, and negotiated consent decrees with all publisher defendants. More generally, Dan investigated competitive effects of proposed mergers in media, sports, real estate, and tangential industries, as well as potential anticompetitive effects of non-merger activity in the same industries, and he negotiated divestitures and consent decrees to remedy anticompetitive aspects of mergers and non-merger activities.   

Prior to his work with the DOJ, Dan was counsel at a prestigious international white collar and corporate defense firm, where, in addition to civil antitrust defense work, he focused on telecommunications disputes before the FCC, state public service commissions, and state and federal courts. 

Dan is the author of Epic v. Google Offers Courts Chance to Correct Course on “Right to Repair,” ProMarket (January 2024); How to Handle Big Tech Acquisitions Under Uncertainty, ProMarket (May 2023); and Halve the Baby: An Obvious Solution to the Troubling Use of Trademarks as Metatags, 18 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 643 (Spring 2000). He also is a co-author of Telecommunications Convergence Overview (with William T. Lake and Thomas P. Olson), 698 PLI/Pat 9 (May 2002).