What To Expect When You're Expecting an Antitrust Trial

One of the most important antitrust cases in recent decades, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) move to block AT&T from acquiring Time Warner, goes to trial in Washington, DC, on March 19. The significance of the case goes well beyond its impact on this huge transaction and on future media mergers. Here, with some necessary simplification, is what non-lawyers will want to know as the trial proceeds. There are three reasons why this case is different from others that have gone to trial in recent memory. First, the companies are not direct competitors; they seek to combine a program producer (Time Warner) with a content distributor (AT&T). Second, when the government has settled vertical cases, it has often negotiated “behavioral” conditions, in which the merging parties agree not to engage in certain possibly anti-competitive practices for a number of years. In this instance, the DOJ refused to settle unless AT&T agreed to “structural” remedies by divesting ownership of significant portions of the Time Warner assets. Third, and most controversially, there is a nearly-unprecedented political underlay to the case.

[Andrew Jay Schwartzman is the Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation (IPR)]