Robert Pitofsky, Champion of Consumer Protection, Dies at 88

Robert Pitofsky, who as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in the Clinton administration advocated for stricter enforcement of competition and greater protection for consumers, died Saturday at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He was 88.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his son David said.

Pitofsky was a leading figure in competition law. An antitrust scholar and a former dean of the Georgetown University law school, he wove in and out of government, private law practice and academia several times in his career.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Pitofsky to head the Federal Trade Commission, at the time a sleepy agency colloquially referred to as “the little old lady of Pennsylvania Avenue.” Pitofsky sought to call attention to the growing threat of corporate consolidation, particularly with the rise of technology. During his tenure, the agency would become the central watchdog for the internet and technology industries.

“There is at this agency a willingness to challenge the most powerful companies in the world, when those companies have done wrong, in the name of the less powerful,” Pitofsky said in 2001, in one of his last speeches as chairman.

Pitofsky won support from consumer groups that had pushed for greater scrutiny of mergers and stronger consumer protection in matters like deceptive advertising. But he was also criticized by some free-market conservatives and antitrust lawyers, who said he was trying to expand antitrust enforcement too far.

Early in his tenure as chairman, Pitofsky held public hearings to gather input on how the FTC might look beyond traditional views of antitrust enforcement to better account for the modernization of the economy and the growth of technology. Among the issues he addressed was the argument by many companies that mergers resulted in corporate efficiencies that would lead to lower prices. After the hearings, the FTC adopted tougher standards in that area, asking companies to demonstrate that those efficiencies could be achieved only through a merger.

Pitofsky’s push to update antitrust policy has echoes today, as the FTC is again opening debate on how it approaches competition enforcement in the tech sector. Consumer groups and some lawmakers have raised concerns that a handful of companies, like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple, have outsize influence on the economy even though they apparently do not violate antitrust laws.

Last month, at the first of a series of FTC hearings on antitrust at the Georgetown Law Center, Joe Simons, the current chairman, said he was modeling the hearings after those held by Pitofsky in 1995.

Simons, who was a student of Pitofsky’s at Georgetown, said in a statement this week that Pitofsky was “one of the true giants of his field” and had been “instrumental in establishing a strong bipartisan consensus on how to do antitrust enforcement and policy.”

As FTC chairman, Pitofsky sought to block nearly a dozen mergers, including that of office-supply retailers Staples and Office Depot. The companies tried to merge again in 2015 but were again blocked.

The agency under Pitofsky also filed to block the merger of BP Amoco with Atlantic Richfield, until BP agreed to sell off $7 billion worth of Arco’s Alaska oil assets to Philips Petroleum. In 2000, however, the agency ultimately agreed to approve Time Warner’s $165 billion merger with AOL, with certain conditions.

He pledged to make antitrust apolitical and to balance free-market interests with concerns that consolidation among corporations was threatening consumer welfare.

“Antitrust has swung left, right and center,” Pitofsky said in an interview with The New York Times in 2000. “We went from being the most vigorous of countries in enforcement in the ‘60s to one of the least aggressive in the ‘80s. My goal was to find a middle between the extremes.”

An area of particular concern to Pitofsky was deceptive advertising. During his first tenure at the FTC, where he ran the consumer protection bureau from 1970 to 1973, he helped bring charges against the maker of Listerine mouthwash, which claimed it could not only treat bad breath but also prevent colds and sore throats.

Robert Pitofsky was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on Dec. 27, 1929, to Morris and Sadye Pitofsky. His father fixed textile looms, and his mother sold dresses.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature from New York University in 1951 and earned a law degree at Columbia Law School in 1954. He served in the Army for two years before joining the private law firm Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood in New York, where his first case was defending Eli Lilly against antitrust charges. In 1964, he began teaching law courses at New York University.

Pitofsky joined Georgetown University’s law school in 1973 as a professor and stayed until 1978, when he was appointed an FTC commissioner. He returned to Georgetown law in 1981 and became dean in 1983. He held that position until 1989.

In addition to his son David, Pitofsky is survived by his wife, Sally Levy Pitofsky; another son, Alex; a daughter, Liz Pitofsky; and seven grandchildren.

Pitofsky returned to teaching several times over the years. In addition to Simons, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the FTC, his students included Christine Varney, who was in charge of antitrust at the Justice Department during the Obama administration.

“I think a really good class,” Pitofsky said in a 2002 interview with Washington Lawyer, posted on the D.C. Bar Association website, “is one of the great pleasures in life.”