WilmerHale achieved an important victory last week for client Regal Entertainment Group when United States District Judge Paul Crotty in the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment on a claim brought by a competitor regarding the exhibition of movies in Manhattan.

The plaintiffs were owners and operators of the Village East movie theater, which is located near a Regal theater, the Union Square 14. They claimed that Regal illegally conspired with almost all of the major film distributors and another theater owner to deny major films to the Village East and to prohibit the Village East from simultaneously showing films that were playing at the Union Square 14. The dozen other defendants settled. The court granted Regal's motion for summary judgment in all respects, finding that there was no evidence of any illegal conspiracy under Section 1 of the Sherman Act or New York's Donnelly Act.

The WilmerHale team included Doug Melamed (who argued the winning motion), Lee Greenfield, Jeffrey Ayer, and IJay Palansky.