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back to article US Appeal Court slaps Apple for trying to shake antitrust monitor

The US Appeals Court has rejected Apple's bid to oust its court-appointed antitrust monitor, after Cupertino failed to convince the panel of three judges that he was doing the company irreparable harm. Apple was trying to have Michael Bromwich taken off the job for the time being while it pursues appeals both against his …

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  1. The_Idiot

    And the merry go round...

    ... probably _will_ break down. er, I mean 'again'.

    <

    The appeals court said that he would only be able to demand documents and interviews that were relevant to his responsibilities.

    >

    So who decides exactly what, on an instance by instance, request by request, document by document and interview by interview basis, _is_ 'relevant to his responsibilities'? Judging purely by the events to date, is it not likely that Apple and the court appointed monitor will not quite 100% agree? And that, say, one or both of them will be dragging this horse back to court again for another flogging, with a different 'justification'?

    Sigh. Le Sigh, and le sigh again.

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    1. Tom7
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      Re: And the merry go round...

      Apple's past behaviour sure hasn't shown any reason to think this won't happen. In fact, their tenacious legal tactics are starting to resemble another certain litigious company. Is there any hint that Boies, Schiller & Flexner are involved?

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And the merry go round...

        More like Prenda Law.

        I suspect that Apple will start to complain to the court about every request, claiming that none of them are necessary for the antitrust monitor to do his job. Eventually the courts will get fed up with all of this nonsense, and will punish Apple by saying that they have to comply with all of his requests, regardless of what they think. Apple will appeal, the Appeal Court will turn them down (probably with an additional bitch-slap just to make the point to Apple's legal department) and at that point the antitrust monitor will probably start finding some really interesting things.

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  2. jai

    "Court slaps Apple"?

    It's not really a slap, is it?

    The court have restricted the monitor to only asking questions and for evidence that relates to the business he is there to monitor.

    Surely this was the strategy of Apple's legal team. Ask for something outrageous, like getting rid of the monitor all together, and instead the court has agreed to what they really want, which is the monitor not having carte blanche on what he can look at.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Court slaps Apple"?

      No, that's a tactic.Strategy would be something like trying to reincorporate in a jurisdiction that allowed price fixing, without thereby losing access to the US and EU markets.

      Apple wil soon be back to complain about the bigger bills as the paralegals employed by the monitor provide pages of justification of why a given request is relevant.

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    2. Don Jefe
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      Re: "Court slaps Apple"?

      Not only is it not a slap, the whole thing is a formality. Apple didn't expect to actually succeed in tossing the watchdog, they just didn't want to get sued by shareholders for not trying.

      So very much of corporate law is 100% formality. What sucks about that is those formalities bog down actual judging of cases and taxpayers get stuck with the bill. Nobody goes into those hearings expecting a judgement in their favor. But they'll get the hell sued out of them if they don't try.

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  3. Malcolm Weir Silver badge

    i don't think the response is 100% removed from being a slap: Apple gets nothing except a restatement of the monitor's frame of reference. As others have noted, "relevance" is a subjective concept, and there was no change to his charter.

    I interpret the "relevance" bit as a statement that the only challenges that the court will tolerate are those concerning relevance, and that's a high bar to prove (alleging irrelevance is easy, but that can be countered with something along the lines of "we won't know whether it's relevant unless you tell us what's in it"!)

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