What Judge Cote wrote in her judgement against Apple and what she instructed the monitor to do were at odds. The appeals court has instructed her and the monitor to stick to what her original judgement was.
It also appears that Apple had no objection to the antitrust monitor being in her original judgement, as it excepted it from appeal:
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Evidently judging that it could live with such a monitor, Apple initially failed to seek a stay when it appealed all of Judge Cote's antitrust findings and orders in October.
But later that month, when monitor Bromwich began his work, he began seeking interviews with Apple's entire executive team and its entire board of directors. The breadth of these inquiries shocked Apple, since few of these officials had any direct involvement with antitrust compliance issues.
In defending the monitor's far-reaching requests after Apple challenged them, Judge Cote explained in a ruling last month that the monitor was not simply supposed to assess the adequacy of the compliance program "in the abstract," but also whether it would be adequate "for Apple," given her view that Apple's culture was peculiarly recalcitrant and indifferent to the antitrust laws. Accordingly, both she and Bromwich -- with whom she had discussed the monitorship while interviewing him for the job -- believed that a permissible part of his job was to scope out Apple's "tone" and "culture." Thus, as Bromwich told astonished Apple representatives at one point, he wanted to "crawl inside [the] company."
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Instead, the judges apparently decided that so long as they clarified the language of Judge Cote's monitorship order -- which had included some broad wording that allowed Bromwich to demand "any document" or interview "any official" at Apple -- Apple would at least not face any "irreparable harm" of the sort that would warrant a stay pending appeal.
Accordingly the panel, in a so-called per curiam decision -- one that is not signed by any one judge -- interpreted Judge Cote's order to be reined in by certain concessions made by Justice Department appellate attorney Finnuala Tessier during oral argument.
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http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.co...ple-antitrust/