Judge sets a date for AT&T
AT&T would have preferred something a bit sooner.
Judge Richard Leon on Thursday said the antitrust trial between President Trump’s Justice Department and the telecom giant will begin on March 19.
Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T, which is trying to buy Time Warner for $85 billion, had hoped to get the legal battle underway in February.
Leon played it down the middle in his first ruling on the US government’s controversial suit to stop AT&T from buying Time Warner.
The Department of Justice claims the mega-merger, which would unite Time Warner’s TNT, HBO, CNN and Warner Bros. studio content machines with AT&T’s wireless and DirecTV distribution monster, will result in higher prices for consumers.
Stephenson has suggested that Trump may be looking to block the merger out of spite for CNN. Trump has knocked the cable news network for airing alleged fake news.
AT&T maintains that with many new choices for consumers — like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and others — it would have to keep prices competitive.
MoginRubin lawyer Jona- than Rubin, who is currently litigating an antitrust case against Visa and Mastercard before Leon, said the jurist is no-nonsense.
“My experience is, he has very little patience for formalism,” and likely will not be wowed by either the government or AT&T’s highly regarded legal eagles from O’Melveny, Rubin said.
AT&T has been maintaining that Uncle Sam has not sued to block a vertical merger for decades.
However, the Department of Justice in 2015 was going to sue to stop Comcast’s $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable partly because it was concerned Comcast, which owns NBC, would have too much power in the market if it became the largest cable company, and owned valuable content.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable abandoned the deal before being sued.