The case, which is enthusiastic about Google’s promoting generation, continues to be wending its approach to trial. The Justice Division and 17 states are searching for $300 million and perhaps extra from Google, alleging in federal court docket in Virginia that the corporate is hurting competition via monopolizing key promoting applied sciences that companies wish to generate earnings on-line.
U.S. District Pass judgement on Leonie M. Brinkema rejected Google’s claims, calling allegations of bias “necessarily a pink herring protection.”
Kanter has constructed a name as an adversary of Giant Tech, prior to now representing purchasers like Google critic Yelp as a spouse on the Kanter Regulation Crew. After President Biden nominated him to guide the Justice Division’s antitrust department in 2021, Kanter was once recused from the Google case for his first yr on the division, and was once approved to paintings on it after that. Kanter was once re-recused in April, after Google retained his former employer, legislation company Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, to constitute them within the case.
The Virginia listening to is a reminder of the Justice Division’s multipronged offensive: Prosecutors gets two swings to check out to nail Google on antitrust fees, showing ahead of one court docket in Washington and one in Virginia.
The primary of the 2 instances — which revolves round Google’s dominance within the seek and seek promoting sectors — started trial in Washington to a lot fanfare on Tuesday, marking the primary time the Justice Division has taken a big tech corporate to court docket for antitrust problems in additional than 20 years.
On the Friday listening to, Brinkema admonished an lawyer for the tech corporate to concentrate on what she described as “massive discovery issues” within the case. The court docket discovered that Google failed to offer tens of millions of paperwork matter to discovery ahead of a pass judgement on’s time limit this summer season.
“In my opinion, this can be a mistake,” Brinkema stated of the allegations involving Kanter. “Google wishes to concentrate on … whether or not the promoting platform is anti-competitive — that’s the case.”
Justice Division lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum argued that Google was once “making an attempt to raise its war of words” with the dep.’s staffing choices — a connection with Kanter’s hiring — “right into a constitutional factor.” However Splendid Courtroom precedent establishes that wondering an lawyer must be performed simplest in abnormal instances, which have been now not provide within the Google antitrust litigation, Teitelbaum argued.
Even supposing the investigation started in 2019, beneath the Trump management, Google lawyer Eric Mahr argued that it kicked into prime equipment simplest after Kanter were given concerned.
“Mr. Kanter, at the side of the DOJ’s leader economist, who was once now not the executive economist on the time, seemed ahead of the Antitrust Department on his personal behalf to foyer DOJ to deliver this situation that he introduced 11 weeks later,” Mahr stated.
Mahr famous that the Justice Division has stated occupation group of workers additionally authorized the Google ad-tech lawsuit, however he added, “Mr. Kanter shouldn’t be allowed to cover in the back of the occupation group of workers, when he directed them to do this.”
Brinkema stated, “I would possibly believe you if Mr. Kanter was once the only lawyer on this case.” The pass judgement on famous that Democratic and Republican state lawyers common from 17 states had been co-plaintiffs within the DOJ’s lawsuit.
The Washington Put up is a member of the Information Media Alliance, a industry affiliation that Kanter has labored with up to now.
The pass judgement on famous that the Justice Division continues to be searching for tens of millions of paperwork in discovery from Google, which the tech corporate has now not produced regardless of a pass judgement on’s time limit previous this month.
“You wish to have to get this situation extra targeted,” Brinkema advised Mahr. “There are massive discovery issues.”
