Microsoft Lawyer To Lead ABA's Antitrust Section

Dan writes "Wired is reporting that a top lawyer from Microsoft will take over later this year as chairman of the American Bar Association's antitrust section. The panel is organizing opposition to a congressional plan that would require more aggressive oversight by the courts of such antitrust settlements. Considering the next major ruling in MS's case is due soon, you can figure out how important this is to MS."

Comments

Not news

[1010011010]

Microsoft lobbies to avoid penalties under the law, to reduce governmental oversight of itself, and to reduce enforcement of judgements already handed down.

Duh.

actually, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's nothing like that.

This guy is on a panel being organized in OPPOSITION to a congressional plan that would require more aggressive oversight by the courts of anti-trust settlements.

This isn't like hiring Janet Jackson to chair a senate subcommittee on decency in public broadcasting. This is like NAMBLA hiring a pedophile to help promote its causes. The complete opposite of what you're suggesting.

MOD UP

[EvanED]

People are not reading the article. The group the lawyer is in charge of is a lobbying group, not one that will be making any of the decisions.

The Civil courts remain another avenue of Justice

[NZheretic]

Judge orders Gates to pretrial questioning

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates must submit to questioning under oath by lawyers for Burst.com Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. as they prepare antitrust claims against the world's largest software maker, a U.S. judge said Friday.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore ordered Gates to undergo the pretrial questioning for three hours.

Burst.com has sued Microsoft, accusing the company of breaking antitrust laws to prevent competition for software used to broadcast sound and audio programs over the Internet.

Motz noted that a federal appeals court has limited use in private suits against Microsoft of evidence from the government's antitrust case against the company. Given that, lawyers for Sun and Burst must have a freer hand to prepare their own evidence, he said.

"It seems to me you ought to be able to depose Mr. Gates or anybody else deposed by the government as much as you want to," Motz told Lloyd Day, a lawyer representing Sun Microsystems.

Motz accepted Burst's argument that Gates "is no Lee Iacocca" and should be forced to answer questions about allegations that Microsoft illegally stifled competition.

Iacocca, when he headed Chrysler Corp., was excused from being questioned under oath in a product-liability lawsuit after arguing that he wasn't personally responsible for the alleged design flaws in cars that were at issue in the case.

ridiculous Wired snippet...

[odin53]

Try reading the whole AP article on which it's based.

The chair of an ABA section isn't all that powerful -- that is, she can't decide ABA "policy" on anything. ABA policies and recommendations are committee-driven things, and the Antitrust section is especially highly organized; there are many subcommittees based on subject, and each subcommittee has a chair (or two). Becoming the chair of an ABA section is really 1) a prestige thing, meaning that the chair is widely respected as a top-flight attorney or legal mind in the area the section covers, and 2) an organizational thing.

The ABA sections have varying levels of influence in legislation; arguably, the antitrust section is quite influential. But there are many reasons that Microsoft will really have no sway, either at the ABA level or the legislation level.

In any case, a conflict of interest MIGHT occur if the ABA were supposed to decide something important or instrumental to the Microsoft antitrust cases. But the ABA most certainly isn't, because that's not the ABA's job.

Re:So what?

[gizmonic]

And Yassar Arafat was awarded one. So that prize doesn't mean shit.

Re:So what?

[EinarH]

There is so many people that can nominate that of course Hitler was nominated. But a nomination doesn't mean shit. The committee has no control over the nominations which are submitted to it. If you are among the persons that can nominate you could nominate Elvis if you want to.

And the person that nominated Hitler in 1938 withdrew his nomination a couple of months later. Hitler didn't even make it to the shortlist.

This isn't really a big deal

[n8ur]

This appointment doesn't have any real significance. The ABA is not a government agency; it's a private lawyer's organization that is voluntary (lots and lots of lawyers don't belong).

The ABA has a lot of different subgroups, on anti-trust, patent law, corporate law, etc. They do training on their areas of specialty, have meetings to talk about their area of interest, and do sometimes lobby about pending legislation.

The ABA Antitrust section has been pro-business, anti-enforcement forever, so this is really no big deal.