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Tiburon resident Gary Spratling, who created the federal playbook for prosecuting corporate price fixing and lent his leadership skills to town government and local nonprofits, has died from brain cancer. He was 83.
Mr. Spratling died at home on March 26. For a half-century he was one of the country’s most influential antitrust litigators, working for the U.S. Department of Justice for 28 years and then for Gibson Dunn, a global law firm.
From 1978 through 1982, Spratling served on the Tiburon Planning Commission. He served on the Town Council from 1982 to 1986, including a term as mayor in 1983.
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Spratling shepherded the creation of the Marin Community Foundation, which today is home to more than 850 charitable funds established by individuals, families and organizations totaling several billion dollars. He was a founding trustee and its first board chair, a position he held for five years.
Mr. Spratling also served as a board member or chair for Marin nonprofits such as Bread and Roses, Guide Dogs for the Blind and Shifting Gears USA, which promotes automotive education and offers trade school scholarships.
Mr. Spratling is survived by his wife Cathy Spratling; two brothers, Donald Spratling of Corte Madera and Richard Spratling of Calistoga; and many nieces and nephews. His brother Robert died previously.
Mr. Spratling was born in San Francisco and raised in the city’s Sunset District. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School, where he joined the debate club and found a lifelong passion for crafting arguments. He went to the University of California at Berkeley for his undergraduate degree and also earned a master’s degree in business administration.
In 1966, two months after he started law school at the University of San Francisco, he was drafted by the Army. After serving two years during the Vietnam War, Mr. Spratling finished law school.
Mr. Spratling was hired by the San Francisco office of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. The office was considered the federal government’s marquis antitrust operation, according to William Farmer, a longtime friend who began at the office at the same time.
“I was struck, and I think everybody was, with how articulate Gary was,” he said. “He had an ability to articulate and express things in a powerful way — not like he’s overbearing, but just powerfully articulate and convincing. And he was so good at it.”
Daniel Rubinfeld, a law and economics professor at UC Berkeley who worked with Mr. Spratling in the 1990s as Justice Department’s chief economist, said Spratling’s business acumen gave him an understanding of the incentives that might be used to pressure corporations and their executives to stop fixing prices with supposed competitors and instead cooperate with prosecutors.
Those insights led to the division’s so-called leniency program. Mr. Spratling’s team worked with whistleblowers and informers to secretly tape meetings about fixing prices across specific industries such as auto parts, vitamins and processed food ingredients.
With such evidence in hand, prosecutors would offer executives and companies full immunity in exchange for secretly cooperating.
The strategy and resulting litigation lowered prices for businesses and consumers. It also brought in billions for the U.S. Treasury.
“That radically changed the way antitrust laws were enforced, especially on the criminal side,” Farmer said.
Before Mr. Spratling’s initiative, the Justice Department’s largest antitrust fine was $10 million. In his final year as a prosecutor, the fines exceeded $1 billion. He oversaw convictions of the U.S. agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, which included a $100 million fine and criminal convictions of executives.
He also oversaw the prosecution of the global pharmaceutical company F. Hoffmann-La Roche for price fixing for food and animal feed ingredients, which led to a $500 million fine. A German firm, BASF, paid a $225 million fine in the same case.
Mr. Spratling accomplished all this from San Francisco. The Department of Justice leadership and numerous administrations honored Mr. Spratling with awards, but he loved the Bay Area and rebuffed every invitation to move to Washington, Farmer said.
Mr. Spratling left the government in 2000 and went to work for Gibson Dunn, spending the next two decades advising global corporations about legal and fair competitive practices.
Asked why he left the government, Farmer said, “Gary had done everything short of being attorney general. And he wasn’t that political. He was competent. He was a powerful, important person you’d want on your side, and you’d want at the top.”
His Gibson Dunn colleagues said Mr. Spratling continued his leadership and mentoring at the firm, and in professional circles.
“Gary always made himself available to teach and train the generations of lawyers who followed him,” said Rachel Brass, co-chair of the firm’s antitrust and competition group. “He made lifelong friends in each of the six continents and scores of countries he visited as part of his work, and he taught his teams the importance of doing the same.”
Mr. Spratling considered himself a San Franciscan and was poised to build a house on Twin Peaks, but then he discovered Tiburon’s charms, Cathy Spratling said. They rented a condo and soon settled in the town, and he quickly entered local government.
“He loved the town so much and felt he could contribute,” his wife said. “You know, he’s a born leader, and just felt like he could maybe help guide the town through some of these challenges surrounding growth.”
A memorial service is planned for June 1, she said.
