Ouch
The irony is so lovely.
Apple has filed a court motion complaining that Michael Bromwich, the court-appointed antitrust regulator overseeing the fruity firm in the wake of its ebook price-fixing shenanigans, is too charging too much for his services. "Mr Bromwich appears to be simply taking advantage of the fact that there is no competition here or, …
" In his first two weeks in the job, Bromwich has invoiced Apple for $138,432 for his services, including a 15 per cent surcharge because he's assigned the role to his consultancy business"
Alledgedly charge almost $70,000 a week and a allegedly a 15% surcharge as (it would seem - allegedly) rather than do the job direct via the law firm he works for - re-assign it to his consultancy business he also allegedly works for and charge 15% more - allegedly?
The way I red it, he's assigning the work to himself, in his other role as a consultant, for an additional 15% fee, something that would be a clear conflict of interest if not for the fact that attorneys, as officers of the court are defined to be incapable of having a conflict of interest, or so I understood in a slightly different context a number of years ago.
Hard to feel sorry for Apple, though.
Well, Apple is arguably a monopoly in the business of content distribution services; a new industry which needs Government review, oversight, and supplier protections.
Purchase of an iDevice feeds into Apple's content distribution services. It's a walled garden approach. If Apple doesn't like your content, they can prevent distribution. Also, with ~20% of the purchase price of software, content, or musical works sale going to Apple (regardless of production or wholesale price), Apple controls the market.
It's a Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment; but the only way others can compete against Apple's distribution services, and walled-garden approach, to prevent further growth of their marketplace monopoly power... is ultimately... to avoid purchase of their products.
I'd take the side of Apple.
Apple likely hired Al Gore as a business director to oversee issues such as this; and manage Political Process; and ensure the Apple Core Team remains coated with teflon.
You saw how Al Gore assisted with this; when there was an inquiry related to backdated stock options... correct?
well hopefully neither side will lose , or win, and be locked in a long and bitter dispute that just drains the resources of both sides,
kind of like Kramer vs kramer only more tedious and no-one really gives a f**k
the only downside being different lawyers win through fees.
I would imagine the lawyers is out of the country setting up an offshore shell to stash the cash in - Apple will then be able to make the transfers direct from one of their tax-free shells and they can then save a few bob.
The American system of making the infringing party pay for their oversight, does have some natural justice embedded in it. Just need to make the lawyer pay for their own oversight and everything will be alright then... Obviously you would think governments are there do to the 'regulation' thing, not over-priced lawyers. Then again, even at €16m a go this would probably be cheaper than the same job in the EU.
Yes, but just to be pedantic these aren't wages since the guy isn't employed by Apple.
That reduces the cost by the marginal tax rate Apple is paying in the US (39.6%) but charging $1,100/hr is still pretty ridiculous if it is the most Apple has ever paid for a lawyer. For a company involved in so many lawsuits, you'd think if anyone knew what top billing rates were, it'd be Apple.
The guy seems to be abusing his position knowing Apple isn't able to shop around. Must be nice to have a court-appointed monopoly!
The weird thing is that books are all different. For each title, there is only one publisher, so there's no real possibility of competition driving the price down; there are no other suppliers. Fore books it's arguable that the author or publisher should set the end user price, and the distributor (Apple or Amazon) should charge the author/publisher a distribution fee. Apple likes this, because price is no longer a factor in the buying decision. Amazon doesn't like it, because they are establishing a monopoly by selling below cost.
There does seem to be some validity to Apple's complaint that the way this has been done means the judge has set herself up as Apple's litigation adversary, with no possibility of legal representation for Apple, when the supervision should have been independent, with reports back to the judge open to Apple to inspect and respond to. That would leave the judge as impartial judge, with legal representation available to Apple.
Is that he is being paid to do a job but then because he doesn't have the appropriate knowledge or experience is then outsourcing the legal work to another firm of lawyers, for which he charges 15% admin fee for their services. If Apple are forking out US$1100 an hour I imagine they'd expect the person they are paying to know what they are doing.
There is also no budget, so it could go on for a very long time.
I'd say the real flaw is that any system allows for such a situation to take place.
Perhaps the actual solution to this is to ensure that any future agreements Apple makes with publishers are subject to external legal review. Or would that not bring quite as much money into the system?
I'd say the real flaw is that any system allows for such a situation to take place.
It does seem bizarre. The court seems to have effectively granted the regulator an open-ended license to take as much money as he wants. While Apple may have agreed to being placed under regulator control as part of the settlement I doubt that is what they expected or foresaw.
I don't have any sympathy for Apple over their guilty behaviour but this does not appear to be reasonable.
Not being an expert on American (or other) law, I'll stick my neck out and try to apply some common sense to the situation (I know, I know...). The guy is appointed by the court to regulate/watch over Apple's practices - fine. He is not an Apple employee - fine. However, Apple are supposed to pay his fee and expenses as a part of the adjudicated remedy - fine.
What is not fine is a) why the fee and maximal expenses are not a part of the judgement; b) why the appointed lawyer is allowed to subcontract the task wholesale to another party, even if it is his own consulting practice (if it were his consulting practice that was appointed to do the job I assume even Apple wouldn't make an issue, so I assume the appointee was a different legal entity). I would expect that if a court appoints X a regulator these two terms should be an explicit part of the ruling. Seems like a major procedural lapse.
Unless the omission is intentional and stems from a surprisingly developed sense of irony on the part of the court... Hmm...
1. court appoints lawyer from law firm at an outrageously/criminally high hourly rate.
2. lawyer outsources work to his side company (which btw should result in him getting a kicking, legally speaking of course)
3. side company outsources actual work to others, presumably at a lesser rate, but still charged on
So the lawyer is being paid to do absolutely nothing?
When did he stand for Parliament?
having said that, couldn't happen to nicer people ;-)
He must be doing a good job based on the "pain-to-complain" index.
Yeah. Irony. In spades. Lovin' it.
Apple would do well to remember that in China, where out of control capitalism is not thought of as a god given right and CEOs are not rock gods, they just execute errant corporate executives.