April 8. 2025
I had the honor of clerking for former Chief Judge Emeritus Louis C. Bechtle of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1979 until 1981. It was perhaps the best professional experience of my life. My clerkship was filled with rarefied cases of historical note, intellectual challenges and conflicting human dimensions. Sadly, Judge Bechtle passed away in December of 2024 at the age of 97. He is deeply missed by his judicial family, who will always hold him in high esteem as our guiding light and true inspiration.
Judge Bechtle was a Temple Law School graduate, class of 1954. His brother, the great trial lawyer Perry Bechtle, was in the class of 1951. Both attended Temple at night on the GI Bill. Judge Bechtle later taught Federal Court Practice at Temple Law School for many years in the evenings after his full day at the court. His class was always packed with law students eager to hear about the navigation and machinations of the federal courts, as only the trial master himself could deliver.
During his time on the bench from 1972 to his retirement in 2001, Judge Bechtle had several law clerks from Temple. He served as the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 1993, taking the place of his judicial mentor, Chief Judge Joseph W. Lord, Jr. Judge Bechtle also served on the Multi-District Litigation Panel and was specially appointed by the United States Supreme Court to handle several major matters in other district courts.
My judicial clerkship included working with Judge Bechtle on several seminal antitrust cases, including the infamous Continental Group (or “Paper Bag” or “Consumer Bag”) cases. The cases proved to be a true clash of the antitrust titans of the Philadelphia Bar and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division at the time. The cases resulted in lengthy jury trials and precedential damages awards and criminal sentences.
My service on those cases came about when I was finishing my third year at Temple Law School. At that time, I was taking antitrust law with Professor Dolores Sloviter (later Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals). I had a few months to go before final exams and graduation when Judge Bechtle called me and said he needed me to start my clerkship right away because his senior clerk was leaving. (When the Judge asked you to help him, you did so without hesitation.) The first case I was assigned to was the historic Consumer Bag case.
My first test under fire on the Consumer Bag cases was at a chambers conference that the Judge was having with the two pillars of the antitrust bar and the lead plaintiffs’ class counsel: Harold Kohn and David Berger. Ironically, Harold Kohn had been the mentor of Professor Sloviter at the Dilworth Paxson firm, where he brought the first precedent-setting antitrust class action cases in the electrical industry. The purpose of the conference was to design a plan moving forward on the plaintiffs’ side and sort out some sticky legal issues that remained. I worked up an outline of the issues and a series of tough questions for the Judge to ask of the attorneys. When I met with the Judge the day before the conference, he said, “Good job,” about my work, but he told me that I should ask them the questions at the conference, not him. Needless to say, that put me—a law student not yet finished with my antitrust course—in a panic, but he said, “You know the issues, and you can handle it.”
The next day, at the conference, the Judge turned to Messrs. Kohn and Berger (with no entourages) and said, “My law clerk has some questions for you.” I will never forget Messrs. Kohn and Berger turning and looking at me with quizzical expressions that conveyed, “Who is this person who is not the Judge?” I went through the questions, they responded, I asked follow-up questions and—with a little help from the Judge—we got what we needed, and the case moved forward.
After the conference, the Judge said he knew I could handle those guys. I had my doubts, but his confidence in me was so special. Funny enough, when I finished my clerkship two years later and started as an associate at Dilworth Paxson, one of my first antitrust cases was against Mr. Kohn and his firm. Everyone just called him Harold, and he signed his letters as such. Talking to Harold then was just as intimidating as it had been two years before, but at least by then I was a licensed antitrust lawyer.
At the core of the Consumer Bag cases, like most antitrust cases, was the issue of causation, and how to best prove or challenge that. These were favorite subjects of Judge Bechtle. A few years ago, the Judge called me and asked if I would be interested in writing an article with him on the subject in the context of antitrust cases.
In memory of Judge Bechtle and his views on an ever-present issue still challenging antitrust litigants, that full article can be found here.
Carl Hittinger (LAW ’79, BA ’76) is a Partner at BakerHostetler, serving as the firm’s Antitrust and Competition Practice National Team Leader.
Reprinted with permission from the February 18, 2025, edition of the Legal Intelligencer © 2025 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or asset-and-logo-licensing@alm.com.