F’BOOK DREAM TEAM It’s David vs. Goliath
Zuckerberg mobilizing legal giants vs. US suit
Facebook is amassing big legal guns in a looming battle with the US government over antitrust allegations — but the feds are working on a shoestring budget.
Mark Zuckerberg’s giant social network — which on Wednesday got sued by the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly using its deals to buy Instagram and WhatsApp to sidestep competition — has tapped some of the nation’s top litigators for the battle, The Post has learned.
Those include white-shoe law firm Davis Polk and its New York-based partner James Rouhandeh, who in 2018 was named “Litigator of the Year” by American Lawyer magazine. Sources said Zuckerberg is also expected to tap Beltway bigwig Mark Hansen, a Harvard-trained attorney who successfully defended Verizon from antitrust allegations by smaller phone networks in a 2004 case that went to the US Supreme Court.
Sources say the FTC’s antitrust case, meanwhile, will be led by in-house counsel Daniel Matheson, who was named the agency’s deputy trial chief only last year after joining the feds in 2016. In 2018, Matheson earned a salary of $136,000, according to public records.
The FTC is bringing the case after its executive director, David Robbins, reportedly announced “belt tightening” in late October amid the coronavirus crisis. Cutbacks included a hiring freeze, encouraging leave without pay and possibly scrapping year-end bonuses, according to online newsletter Big Technology.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment, but the timing of the cuts to the FTC’s budget, pegged at slightly more than $330 million this year, couldn’t be worse, says William Kovacic, a professor at George Washington University who was an FTC commissioner from 2006 to 2011.
“It’s entirely legitimate to look at the lawyer matchups,” Kovacic told The Post. “The quality of the legal team is essential.”
In the case of the FTC, insiders say its staffer Matheson — who graduated from University of Michigan Law School in 2004 — earned a scrappy reputation as he prosecuted an antitrust case against giant chipmaker Qualcomm. In a May 2019 ruling for the FTC, US District Judge Lucy Koh noted that top Qualcomm execs including co-founder Irwin Jacobs were well-coached by their lawyers, but “very reluctant and slow to answer, and at times cagey” when cross-examined by Matheson and his team.
“Dan has one speed and that is being aggressive,” a DCsource said of Matheson’s style in court.
The FTC’s victory over Qualcomm was unanimously overturned last August byaUS Appeals Court, which rejected the agency’s argument that Qualcomm’s requiring customers to sign licensing agreements — a practice that sparked a high-profile spat with Apple— wasanticompetitive. Still, some insiders gave credit to Matheson, who took the case to trial despite Apple settling and the Justice Department siding with Qualcomm.
Nevertheless, Facebook’s own chief lawyer Jennifer Newstead has assembled a formidable team, insiders say.