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Your lawyer should advise you of all of those arguments but that doesn't mean you have to instruct the lawyer to make them. Litigants who make legally tenable b

by sjy 7y ago

Your lawyer should advise you of all of those arguments but that doesn't mean you have to instruct the lawyer to make them. Litigants who make legally tenable but unethical arguments can still be criticised on ethical grounds. Apple could have conceded the plaintiffs' standing in this case but chose not to. The fact that this case has been tied up in expensive preliminary litigation so long surely acts as a deterrent to anyone else who would like to bring an antitrust suit against Apple, and if Apple ran this argument for that reason alone, that would be unethical and worthy of criticism.

lallysingh 7y ago
What's the unethical argument here?
- sjy 7y ago
  I think it is important that the anticompetitive effects of Apple's control of the iOS app store be examined by US antitrust courts. Regulators and app store developers had not taken action at the time this lawsuit was filed, and I think it is important that app store users can force the issue in these circumstances. I think there is at least an ethical issue with Apple choosing to argue that the plaintiffs do not have standing, rather than explaining why its actual behaviour is consistent with current US antitrust laws. Apple won on the standing point in the trial court, then lost on appeal to the circuit court, and chose to protract the preliminary litigation by running this failed appeal to the Supreme Court, at significant cost to its opponents. Perhaps in doing so, Apple achieved a public benefit by securing a Supreme Court decision that explains this contested part of the law on standing. But if the minority opinion had prevailed, Apple would have won a victory that deprived the courts of the opportunity to review the legality of its behaviour for a few more years. I don't know enough about the decision-making process to say whether Apple's behaviour in running this litigation was ethical. My point is that Apple executives are morally responsible for it, even if it is perfectly legal.

by sjy 7y ago

lallysingh 7y ago

What's the unethical argument here?

sjy 7y ago
I think it is important that the anticompetitive effects of Apple's control of the iOS app store be examined by US antitrust courts. Regulators and app store developers had not taken action at the time this lawsuit was filed, and I think it is important that app store users can force the issue in these circumstances. I think there is at least an ethical issue with Apple choosing to argue that the plaintiffs do not have standing, rather than explaining why its actual behaviour is consistent with current US antitrust laws. Apple won on the standing point in the trial court, then lost on appeal to the circuit court, and chose to protract the preliminary litigation by running this failed appeal to the Supreme Court, at significant cost to its opponents. Perhaps in doing so, Apple achieved a public benefit by securing a Supreme Court decision that explains this contested part of the law on standing. But if the minority opinion had prevailed, Apple would have won a victory that deprived the courts of the opportunity to review the legality of its behaviour for a few more years. I don't know enough about the decision-making process to say whether Apple's behaviour in running this litigation was ethical. My point is that Apple executives are morally responsible for it, even if it is perfectly legal.