Around 7pm on May 16, a Google employee hand-delivered a cashier’s check to the US Department of Justice.
The amount was $2,289,751.
That money would cover the cost of one of the lawsuits the Department of Justice – and 18 states – brought its unfair trial against the company’s advertising practices.
But more importantly for Google, it would mean that the case will not see the jury.
The antitrust case, which began Monday and is expected to last another month, has been set up as a bench trial. There is no jury. US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, decides the facts and law of the case from the Virginia court.
The Department of Justice accuses Google of dominating the digital advertising market, suppressing competitors and trapping consumers in its environment to raise prices for everyone. The case differs from a separate Google antitrust case filed earlier this year, in which a judge found the company illegally dominated the search market.
Google says the Justice Department has overstepped the company’s control over digital advertising. If Brinkema decides that Google is an illegal monopoly in the market, it could force the company to divest.
Only 1 in 5 counts required a jury
Although criminal defendants have a constitutional right to a trial in court, civil case laws are more nuanced.
The Justice Department brought five separate lawsuits against Google under the Sherman Act, a landmark 1890 law that allows the Justice Department to break up monopolies.
The first four actions sought “injunctive relief,” meaning a judge could later order Google to change its practices.
The fifth was cost, meaning money.
How much money? After agreeing with the court, the Department of Justice said that the financial costs will be equal to the total that the eight different organizations paid for the online ads they bought on the Google market between January 2019 and January 2023. That amount will triple. corresponding to the Sherman Act. And then they would increase the interest.
According to several professors the Justice Department hired to do the math, that all added up to $2,289,751.
For context, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is worth $1.9 trillion.
Justice Department antitrust lawyers were caught by the check, one said in a recent court hearing. The check was paid the night before the big report. Google did not admit any wrongdoing in the fifth report, but their attorneys at Gibson Dunn said they “will offer to pay the United States for the full amount of financial assistance they can get.” ” to make matter “slow down” and “run.” ” all other cases.
Besides, Google’s lawyers said, it was cheaper than the legal fees the company would incur to continue fighting it.
“Instead of asking the court to intervene in the DOJ’s unwarranted and inappropriate demand for a jury trial, and to prevent the waste of resources that would result from defending against a claim for damages less than part of the litigation costs, Google has granted the United States payment of all the costs it seeks, minus three times interest,” Google’s lawyers wrote.
The case is being held in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia. AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough
But Google’s real victory was avoiding the jury.
Juries are less predictable than judges, and may be less sympathetic to a large tech company.
Rebecca Allensworth, a professor of antitrust law at Vanderbilt University, told BI, “There’s a stronger public sentiment against big tech than there’s ever been.”
The Justice Department “virtually never” brings antitrust cases to court, Allensworth told BI. But in this case, they wanted it. Attorneys for the state appealed to Brinkema, the judge, arguing that the fifth count should stand and the costs should be decided by the jury. The amount Google gave them on the check was incorrect, they said, citing court documents they say show the costs should have been calculated differently.
In the end, Brinkema sided with Google. The $2,289,751 figure comes from calculations made by Justice Department experts, he said in the ruling. And the fact that it was a cashier’s check, issued by Wells Fargo, gave the Justice Department a reason to deny the money to keep the case open, he said. (The exact amount of the check was initially disclosed in court documents, but Brinkema later made it public.)
“It’s true ‘here’s the money,'” he said at the hearing on June 7. “If they had given you a wheelbarrow of money, it would have been the same thing.”
He said, the case will be out of court.
A Google representative referred BI to an earlier statement the company issued in response to the judge’s decision.
“The damage report filed by the DOJ has been destroyed,” the company said in a statement at the time. “We are pleased that the Court has decided that this case will be decided by a judge.”
Representatives for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
At the end of the hearing on June 7, Brinkema praised Google and the Department of Justice for their smart legal arguments.
“I want to commend the counsel,” he said. “I am looking forward to this case because the quality of the lawyers has been very good.”