Even AT&T Can't Defend TW Deal Court Approval, DOJ Says

AT&T doesn't strongly defend the U.S. District Court's logic that let it buy Time Warner, but focuses on "musing footnotes and phrases as if they were holdings," DOJ said in a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reply brief Thursday (docket 18-5214) responding to the acquirer's appellee brief (see 1809200039). It said AT&T doesn't address the lower court's inconsistencies in rejecting bargaining principles accepted by economists. Justice said the court insisted on an unreasonably high degree of certainty in DOJ economic modeling and its finding of zero harm to be unsupportable, making remand "unavoidable." AT&T didn't comment.