Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
FJ Torres makes the point that everyone but Apple chose to settle and avoid being targeted -- the idea being that Cote's decisions regarding punishment are unprecedented because no other corporation has been as stupid as Apple about refusing to settle in the face of such charges.
Whether or not you think that argument is fair to Apple or relevant to the sweep of Cote's decisions, I find the idea difficult to accept -- not because Apple is necessarily in the right, but because corporations often do stupid things based on bad legal advice. If Apple is guilty of that, then I doubt they were the first to make that mistake.
And if Apple isn't the first, then I'd have to study past cases in which companies chose not to settle and compare the actions and outcomes of those to the current example.
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1- Most price fixing conspiracies are settled because of the Prisoner's Dilema. The first to settle gets off lightly and the last gets hammered.
2- If Apple's legal counsel told them a hub-and-spoke conspiracy was not a violation of antitrust they should have been fired on the spot. Possibly disbarred for incompetence. It is a textbook example of the kind of behavior antitrust was created to prevent. My suspicion is Jobs decided he was not going to settle a second antitrust lawsuit and everybody else has been stuck trying to follow through to protect their image. Hence the legally-weak, PR-focused filings. It's all about telling the faithful they are being victimized. It's their way of overturning the table, because neither the facts nor the law are on their side.
3- Companies have refused to settle antitrust cases before. None has done well. AT&T was destroyed until all that remains is the name. Microsoft was saddled with a monitor for years, billions of dollars of ambulance-chaser lawsuits and shakedowns. Conversely, when Apple quickly settled their first antitrust conspiracy case, it got buried so quickly most people don't even know it happened and think it's a bit of meaningless trivia instead of a context-setter for the current penalties trial.
They should have not launched the conspiracy simultaneously, that was arrogant and stupid. Having done that, and having been caught, they should have settled. Even now, they have the chance to minimize the damages by accepting they crossed the line. Or at least pretend they do.
That way they get to live and conspire another day.
Antitrust is not a rap you can beat.