Setting Up the Showdown washingtonpost.com
I got to quote pieces of this article, strictly for amusement. It's meant to be a serious article, but in this context. . .
"Bill Gates has said he can't believe he will be regulated by people who didn't pass high school physics," complained one of the state attorneys general. "We can't believe we have to deal with someone who didn't pass high school civics."
Naive high school civics guy says, to know Bill is to love him. Maybe he cut class to read Ayn Rand, at least the dirty parts. As I've said, I doubt the professed F. Scott Fitzgerald fan would wade through the prolix prose in its entirety, but who can say?
The Microsoft team was "belligerent and counterproductive in a way that just made things worse," said George S. Cary, a former Federal Trade Commission attorney and now a partner at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. "They brought an unwillingness to concede that there was any validity to what the government was doing. It may be a very righteous position but I don't think it's ultimately very productive."
Maybe Bill and the lawyers have been reading the "How High" thread and interpreting it as an unbiased sample.
"There's a lawyer in town, I won't mention his name, who just whines," said Steve Newborn, a former FTC attorney who is now a partner at Rogers & Wells. "He'd call and say, 'Oh, my client just called and he really wants this.' You'd almost give it to him just to get off the phone."
"We must be free to innovate", Bill whined, repeatedly. "It's the principle of the thing". Maybe it's principled to be unprincipled in business.
Meanwhile, on to the much dreaded speeding analogy. Given the popularity of the Chrysler car radio defense, I guess it was inevitable.
Until last week, Neukom and his colleagues had been utterly unyielding on the fundamentals of the case. And Justice lawyers were still irked by Microsoft's attitude after signing a 1995 consent decree that sought to limit some of the com pany's business practices. At such moments, decorum calls for a company to quietly retreat, mumbling something about a fair and equitable settlement. But Microsoft -- in conversations with securities analysts, corporate customers and the media -- crowed that the feds hadn't landed a glove on them. Gates himself bragged that the consent decree wouldn't change Microsoft's business a whit.
"They were almost snickering at the division," said William Ko vasic, a professor at George Mason University Law School. "They were basically saying, 'You got us for jaywalking and now we're speeding.' "
Then they got pulled over for speeding, and they flipped off the cop and told him he was an idiot. Then, they wondered why the cop called for backup and they go hauled back to the station.
Next, the occupation of a onetime participant here is revealed. Man, I got to quit messing with these guys.
"I find the opportunity to say hello and shake someone's hand is crucial to any effective discussion," said John Dowd, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. "It gives you a chance to read the other side, to watch their body language," Dowd said.
Hi John, good to know you. How's the ad hominem business these days? What's your take on the value of the "Bill Gates is John Galt" defense?
Finally, an exciting conclusion for the "Business is war" crowd.
At least for the time being, Klein appears willing to keep his troops in check. But aficionados of this quintessential game of legal chicken say that if the cease-fire doesn't hold, the results will be memorably ugly.
"Litigation is war without guns," said Robert Litan, a former deputy assistant attorney general in Justice's antitrust division. "Any lawyer will tell you that."
I don't know, I'd paraphrase Clausewitz here. Litigation is business by other means. It all goes together, somehow. Fair? All's fair in love, war, business, and litigation. For the avid followers of the O.J. trial for the technoweenie set, it looks like the initial skirmishing is over, the real battle's about to start.
Cheers, Dan. |
