“To her credit, the remedies U.S. District Judge Denise Cote proposed last week to prevent Apple from ever again conspiring to fix e-book prices were far less draconian (and frankly bizarre) than the ones the Department of Justice had requested. See DOJ remedies,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“But the air of unreality that permeated her earlier decision in the case — in which Amazon, a monopolist engaged in the predatory pricing of e-books, escaped untouched, and Apple, the new entrant in the market, was found liable for violating antitrust law — carried over into Friday’s hearing. (Transcript.)
One of the strangest moments came in a set speech Judge Cote gave just before she made her remedy proposals,” P.E.D. reports. “After describing Apple and the five so-called publisher defendants as playing ‘hard ball’ in a ‘rough and tumble game … for high stakes,’ she added this complaint: ‘None of the publisher defendants — and this is true for Apple, as well — have expressed any remorse over their actions, made any public statements admitting wrongdoing, undertaken any voluntary program to prevent a recurrence. They are, in a word, unrepentant.'”
P.E.D. reports, “If the attorneys for Apple and the publishers took objection to the tone of her remarks — which seemed more appropriate for a crusading prosecutor than a fair-minded judge — they would not be the first. Many of the 21 reviews she received in The Robing Room — a kind of Rate My Professors for judges — described her as hard-working and meticulous. But more than half complained that she was ‘biased’ and pre-judged cases before she heard the evidence.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Denise Cote is a hack and a pawn.
Here’s to Apple running into a competent judge during the appeals process of this fiasco.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Jax44” for the heads up.]
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