Antitrust Prosecutors to Retry Nippon Paper

Federal prosecutors will seek to retry Japan’s Nippon Paper Industries Co. for alleged antitrust violations even though the company’s landmark trial in a Boston federal court ended with a hung jury earlier this week, officials said. The announcement by the Justice Department could set up a replay of the trial against Nippon, which is accused of conspiring in 1990 with several other Japanese paper makers to fix prices of thermal fax paper in the United States. Jurors told the judge and attorneys in the case Tuesday that they were deadlocked 10 to 2 but didn’t say whether their final vote favored acquittal or conviction. An attorney for Nippon, Alan M. Cohen, said he hoped that prosecutors would reconsider their decision. Cohen said he planned to file court papers asking U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner to dismiss the case on grounds the government had failed to prove the charges. Nippon’s prosecution was the nation’s first criminal antitrust trial of a foreign company charged with alleged misconduct that took place entirely outside the United States.