Details from yesterday's hearing, vis Publishers' Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...h-monitor.html
Quote:
After a roughly hour-long hearing, during which Apple reiterated its complaints over Bromwich, and DoJ attorneys rebutted, Cote held that Bromwich’s actions were in fact within the bounds of his narrow mandate to help Apple craft a suitable antitrust training program.
At times, the judge appeared annoyed, and cautioned Apple attorney Theodore Boutrous twice for his characterizations of Bromwich’s conduct. She suggested that interviewing Apple executives was essential to Bromwich's task, to help him understand Apple's business and and its corporate culture. While Boutrous sought to portray Bromwich as a meddling, partisan prosecutor, Cote told Boutrous that “the record is what it is,” and that “just because you say it does not make it so.”
At one point, Cote noted that Bromwich had conducted just 11 interviews for a total of 13 hours so far, which the DoJ argued was hardly evidence of any "roving" investigation.
In delivering her ruling from the bench, Cote reminded Apple attorneys that she ordered the monitor reluctantly, and had greatly reduced the monitor's scope from the DoJ's initial proposal. But Apple’s price-fixing conspiracy reached to the highest levels of the company, she stressed, and was assisted by Apple's in-house counsel.
She also specifically reminded Apple that under the terms of the final order—the language of which Apple attorneys helped to draft, and approved—the monitor has the explicit power to interview any Apple personnel, and to access records, and that Apple attorneys have "no say" in how the monitor carries out his duties. Apple officials are also to “assist” the monitor, she noted, and not to interfere in any way with his work, citing the language of the final order.
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