Donald Kaplan

Practice Areas

Don Kaplan concentrates his practice in litigation and representation before courts and administrative agencies, with particular emphasis on antitrust, economic regulation, energy, and competition and pricing issues in regulated industries.

Before joining the firm in 1990, Don was special litigation counsel for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice for more than nine years. Before that, he was chief of the Energy Section of the Antitrust Division. He joined the Department of Justice in 1975. As special litigation counsel, Don conducted significant and complex litigation, regulatory interventions, and investigations for the Antitrust Division, and was the Department’s principal counsel before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He represented the Department in numerous major proceedings at the Commission involving the electric power, natural gas, and petroleum pipeline industries. He also conducted litigation and merger investigations in a variety of energy industries, as well as the oil field equipment and services, financial services, and postal services industries.

Since joining the firm, Don has developed an extensive practice before the FERC. He has been active in a wide variety of issues, including electric utility restructuring and reorganization; mergers and asset acquisitions; Regional Transmission Organization structure and wholesale markets; transmission rates, cost allocation, and open access; market power and market-based rates; and federal wholesale and state retail competition. He has also testified as an expert witness before a state commissions on competition issues.

In addition to his regulated energy practice, Don represents clients on mergers, antitrust investigations, and litigation in the publishing industry. He also was special trial counsel for the United States in its successful arbitration against the United Kingdom over Heathrow Airport user charges.

Don is a 1970 cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School. He clerked for the Hon. John F. Dooling, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, New York, and Washington, DC bars, and is also a member of the American Bar Association, including its Antitrust Section, and has been the chair of the Energy Bar Association’s Antitrust Committee. He has spoken at numerous seminars and bar association conferences.

Publications

“Key Provisions of FERC’s 2021 Enforcement Report,” Pratt’s Energy Law Report, February 2022.

Education