Judge Richard Leon, of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled today that the United States failed to persuade him to block AT&T’s bid to acquire Time Warner under antitrust law. See the 172-page opus here: AT&T Opinion 6-12-18
AT&T
Who Cares About Passengers? Not the News.
Blawgletter has lately started scanning news reports about the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division's bid to block the minnow-eats-whale merger of U.S. Airways and American Airlines. Wowsers.
Let's start by saying we've found that the biz reporters have a not-very-good grasp of antitrust law. A terrible one in fact. They seem to think that whatever…
Third Circuit Okays Side-Step of Stolt-Nielsen; Class Arbitration Order Stands
Blawgletter thinks we can all agree that the U.S. Supreme Court has done few favors in the last decade or two for what the folks at the American Law Institute call "aggregate litigation" — mainly class actions. What with Dukes (no class for women who work at Wal-Mart) and Concepcion (no class for AT&T wireless…
Fish or Fowl? Sixth Circuit Ponders Telephone v. Cable TV Question
AT&T claimed that a state-wide franchise it got from Kentucky in 1886 — to build and use "telephone lines, exchanges and systems" — gave it the right not only to furnish Bluegrass Staters phone service but also to provide them cable TV. And the district court agreed.
The Sixth Circuit did not. The panel ruled…
AT&T Quits Quest for T-Mobile
AT&T just told the world that it and Deutsche Telekom would halt the purchase and sale of T-Mobile USA. The press release stated:
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said today that after a thorough review of options it has agreed with Deutsche Telekom AG to end its bid to acquire T-Mobile USA, which began in
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Wireless Goes Haywire
AT&T Wireless tried for T-Mobile in what looks like an attempt at building a bridge too far. Which Blawgletter thought from the get-go.
[Let's ignore for now the thing the editors of our — and AT&T's — hometown paper wrote about the FCC's failure to shoo the AT&T/T-Mobile deal through. Let's just say they'd have…
DOJ Antitrust Division Sues to Stop AT&T from Gobbling T-Mobile (Update)
Dang. The Antitrust Division has teeth after all.
(Blawgletter called it in March, by the way.)
Per the WSJ, the AD sued to enjoin the deal for AT&T to acquire T-Mobile.
The pact would create the biggest, baddest, anticompetitivest wireless firm in the U.S.
The Division's press release said:
The department’s lawsuit, filed in…
The Politics of Merging
Blawgletter said, in the first blush of astonishment at AT&T's plan to buy T-Mobile, that we felt in our gut the deal would never go through.
But now we read that left-leaning groups like the NAACP, NEA, AFL-CIO, and GLAAD support the merger. Will wonders never cease?
No one, we suspect, would accuse any of those outfits of…
Quote of the Day: Jan Horbaly
[W]e deem the Eastern District's previous claim construction in a case that settled more than five years before the filing of this lawsuit to be too tenuous a reason to support denial of transfer.
Jan Horbaly, In re Verizon Business Network Services Inc., Misc. No. 956, slip op. at 6 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 23…
Fear, Antitrust, and AT&T
Blawgletter felt in our gut that the AT&T deal with Deutsche Telekom to buy the T-Mobile wireless system would never go through.
Christine Varney, the head of the Antitrust Division in the U.S. Department of Justice, wouldn't stand for it. She threw out a Division report that she saw as too deal-friendly and teamed up with…