Intrigue Pre-Empts Planned Testimony At AT&T-DOJ Antitrust Trial

Intrigue Pre-Empts Planned Testimony At AT&T-DOJ Antitrust Trial

Instead of testimony from a Sling TV exec and Turner Broadcasting CEO John Martin, today’s trial action was pre-empted this morning by a mysterious debate about emails, confidentiality and admissible evidence. It isn’t clear when Martin will take the stand.

Related
DOJ's Lead Witness Against AT&T Knocks Time Warner Deal But Gets Grilled: "You Should Have Done Some Homework"

“I’m not sure what the consequences will be,” said U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon, more than a little ominously, after a 90-minute delay opened Monday’s action. As attorneys huddled and held a series of sidebar discussions at the judge’s bench, white noise was piped into the courtroom, a standard (if Guantanamo Bay-like) tactic designed to prevent the 150 or so observers, including the press, from hearing any of the exchanges.

“My sense is there are going to be quite a few emails to go through,” he said. “Hopefully we will be able to review them all before we return” from lunch recess.

Warren Schlichting, group president at Sling, was about to begin testifying in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against AT&T when DOJ attorneys asked to approach the bench. Leon never divulged the exact nature of the discussion, leaving observers to speculate about leaked emails or sensitive disclosures. By this afternoon, when the trial resumes, Schlichting and Martin may or may not testify, and it wasn’t clear what may be learned (other than a new threshold for white noise endurance).

Martin’s appearance as a government witness was slated to be a marquee event of the week. At a conference last month, Martin dismissed the DOJ as “clueless” and said “the theory of the case just makes absolutely no sense. Zero.”

The case, which began last week, is expected to last until early May, with the outcoming determining the direction of the media business in the near term. During opening arguments last Thursday, the government outlined its case, insisting that the $85 billion merger would suppress innovation and raise prices for rival consumers and other companies. AT&T countered that the deal would benefit consumers and that, as a vertical transaction, it involves only complementary business units. No vertical deal has been challenged in court by the DOJ for decades, and the media business has to go back to the late-1990s to the Microsoft saga to find even an adjacent case with these kinds of stakes.