PAUL VELLA
Head of Discrimination
Associate Director
We identify direct and indirect discrimination behaviors in the public and private sector that lead to economic unfairness. We investigate discrimination bias arising from the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence and pricing policies that cause a disparate impact on protected minorities.
Our original research spans across all major economic sectors and is grounded in solid statistical methodologies. We focus on practices that have a disproportionate impact on subsets of the population that present one of the many protected characteristics such as: gender, age, ethnicity, disability and religion.
Our discrimination practice focuses on the many aspects of the enforcement cycle: from identifying discriminatory conduct, to estimating damages and producing expert reports assessing disparate impact.
For any Discrimination related enquiries please contact Paul Vella at paul.vella@fideres.com
Producing research that outlines discriminatory practices
Assessing disparate impact on relevant protected minority groups
Identify digital algorithmic discrimination
Discriminatory impact of artificial intelligence
Statistical and data analysis to determine disparate impact
Address class action commonality issues, where applicable
Expert reports
Expert witness testimony
Merits reports
Plan of allocation and settlement distribution
Damages analysis
Data analysis
Fideres’s economics and data analysis expertise allow us to provide law firms and claimants with statistical evidence of discrimination, disparate impact and damages quantification. We have been involved in arbitration and litigation proceedings in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa that involve discriminatory conduct in a number of industry sectors: from finance to big tech. In Discrimination cases, as for other types of litigation, Fideres’s unique strength is its ability to use publicly available data to identify this form of wrongdoing and provide expert evidence from a pre-filing stage to trial. The list below illustrates the breath of our experience in this field:
Landline Overcharging
Energy Payments Affected Minorities
Pre-paid Cards
Arbitration Dispute against Chime
Fideres has been at the forefront of investigations into cryptocurrency price manipulation and alleged misconduct by crypto exchanges. We have been advising our clients on a number of court and arbitration disputes. We collaborate with academics and our affiliate academic experts in this fast developing area of finance. Sample cases include:
Fideres has been crucial to the filing and prosecution of a number of high-profile US commodities cases. Our successes in this area have included our novel microeconomic analysis of pricing and cost structures in the meatpacking and DRAM industries, and our use of complex auction pricing data from precious metal futures markets to show how these commodities were systematically overpriced by cartels. Sample cases include:
Pharmaceuticals and healthcare markets can seem as intricate and opaque as they are vital to consumers wellbeing, which makes them crucial sectors for antitrust scrutiny. Our analysis of drug pricing data helps to identify the markets in which pharmaceutical manufacturers collude to raise prices, and our expert testimony on the economics of drug industry helps plaintiffs recover damages. In healthcare markets, Fideres has led pioneering work on market definition and overcharge analysis in the increasingly-concentrated and expensive regional hospital markets of the United States. Sample cases include:
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