Sometimes it takes a village. When it came to overturning the 2016 jury verdict that found Sabre's global distribution system contract with US Airways violated antitrust law, it took a panel of three judges from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals: Debra Ann Livingston, Denny Chin and, most senior among them, Robert D. Sack.
While the judges in September voided a judgment from a lower court against Sabre, not all was won for the GDS operator. Not only did the appeals court kick litigants back for a retrial on the count Sabre had lost, it also revived two of the airline's antitrust claims that, the judges found, the district court prematurely tossed before trial.
American Airlines acquired US Airways after the lawsuit began and adopted the case. For now, American and Sabre are back to square one of this decade-long legal saga.
An out-of-court settlement is a possibility, and a proposed retrial won't take place before April 2021—10 years to the month after US Airways first filed claims.
Based on the appeals court ruling, three out of four of US Airways' original claims are back in play. First is the contract claim on which US Airways prevailed before the appeals court vacated the judgment, alleging Sabre's full-content GDS provisions with the carrier ran afoul of antitrust laws. The two claims that never made it to trial relate to the notion that Sabre operated a "relevant submarket" and unlawfully wielded monopolistic power in a market comprising only Sabre's GDS subscribers.