from the San Francisco Chronicle:
"A year ago February , Thomas Penfield Jackson, the trial court judge, appointed a distinquished jurist, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, to mediate a settlement. With draconian penalties looming, Microsoft accepted demands by the Justice Department that included tough, continuing regulation of the company's marketing tactics. But the hardline state Attorneys general---notably those from California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa---vetoed the deal, leading the frustrated mediator to point in public that the "states do not have the resources to do more than free ride on federal antitrust legislation, complicating its resolution."
Since then, an appellate court has rolled back most of the findings of legal liability that gave the government its leverage and instructed the trial court to create remedies that fit the "drastically altered" circumstances. Under prodding to settle from the newly appointed judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, prosecutors worked out another deal that puts a lid on Microsoft's aggressive behavior---albeit one less confining than the agreement California Attorney General Lockyer and company so righteously dismissed almost 2 years ago. A rump group of attorneys general have now declared that they will oppose the proposed settlement when Judge Kollar-Kotelly formally reviews it.
Why are they asking the court to derail the settlement effectively guaranteeing that the case won't be resolved for years? The state attorneys general claim the high ground as defenders of consumers, but it is hard to see what consumers of softwarewould gain in prolonging the legal agony.
Besides, the California voters who elected Lockyer are investors as well as consumers. The last time the attorneys general vetoed a settlement, the value of Microsoft stock held in the pension funds representing California's public school teachers and state employees fell by a whopping 1.2 billion. While the shock of a setback might not be as large this time around, the last thing investors need in this
economic climate is another source of uncertainty.
Continuing to drag out the case is economically irrespondsible.Americans have already paid at least 35 million in costs at the federal and state levels for the antitrust enforcement against Microsoft. By it's own estimate, the California attorney general 's office has already put in 4,422 hours of work into the case, costing taxpayers 1.4 million. That is too much at a time when the state's government is so cash starved that it has announced that it is raising the sales tax.
Perhaps Lockyer is simply defending California-based companies that are Microsoft's bitter rivals: Netscape, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. As Judge Posner complained, the state attorneys general "are subject to influence by interest groups that may represent a potential antitrust defendant's competitors." |
