Starting this week, AT&T and Time Warner get their day in court to prove that their proposed merger does not violate the anti-trust laws. I outlined the basic line of reasoning in the government’s case back shortly after it became clear the government intended to oppose. Since then, the parties have engaged in discovery, lined up their experts, and now filed their pre-trial briefs outlining their arguments on the relevant issues and standards. You can read the AT&T pre-trial brief here, and the DoJ pre-trial brief here.
It’s a lot easier to outline what the parties will try to show, and their differing strategies for trying to show it, than it is to guess how Judge Leon will decide at this point. But while the outcome alone makes this pretty important, it has the potential to massively shape antitrust going forward (assuming antitrust law survives the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Ohio v. American Express). Below, I unpack what makes this case so potentially important from a law perspective.