It could be well into 2023 before the government faces Google in U.S. District Court in Washington. At a Friday telephonic hearing, Judge Amit Mehta set a Sept. 12, 2023, trial start date for DOJ and states’ antitrust lawsuit against Google. Mehta said he's “anxious” to get Thursday’s separate antitrust complaint against Google by 38 attorneys general (see 2012170063) on the same discovery schedule for efficiency. Google attorney John Schmidtlein agreed the new case should be assigned to Mehta and consolidated with the first case for discovery, but Google isn’t ready to take a position on whether trials should be combined. On states’ new case, Mehta asked Google to say by Jan. 8 if it will answer the complaint or file a motion to dismiss; the judge set a status hearing for Jan. 21 at 11 a.m. The parties proposed (in Pacer) a scheduling and case management order Dec. 11 and agreed (in Pacer) to a protective order last Monday. Google said (in Pacer) Thursday it doesn’t oppose California joining as a plaintiff in the DOJ case, which Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday also asked to join. Texas and nine other states separately sued Google Wednesday at U.S. District Court in Sherman, Texas (see 2012160059).

California will join DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) announced Friday: “Google’s anticompetitive behavior has unlawfully maintained the company’s monopoly on internet search and search-based advertising at the expense of consumers.” The platform’s market dominance leaves little choice for consumers and small businesses, he added. “By using exclusionary agreements to dominate the market, Google has stifled competition and rigged the advertising market.” Eleven Republican AGs initially signed onto the lawsuit (see 2011180032).

COVID-19's “unprecedented complications” are making it impossible for Customs and Border Protection to be served summonses and complaints by certified or registered mail from many of the thousands of plaintiffs in the Section 301 litigation at the U.S. Court of International Trade, said DOJ Wednesday in a motion (in Pacer) to adopt alternative procedures for service. Staff in CBP’s chief counsel’s office has “been working under maximum telework conditions,” and some mail “has been returned to the sender as undeliverable,” it said. To resolve the issue, DOJ’s international trade field office “agrees to accept service of these documents on behalf of CBP,” it said. The motion “concerns overall case management of an unusually large volume of cases,” it said. The attached list (in Pacer) of the 3,659 complaints filed through Tuesday spans 193 pages. All the complaints seek to get the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariff rulemakings vacated and the duties refunded.

The Supreme Court invited the acting solicitor general to submit a brief with the U.S. position on Comcast's petition for writ of certiorari, in a SCOTUS docket 20-319 notice Monday. The company seeks to undo a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversal of a lower court's dismissal of Viamedia antitrust claims on Comcast's control of cable TV advertising interconnects (see 2002260020). Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn't take part in last week's consideration of Comcast's cert petition.

Most observers expect the U.S. Court of International Trade to pick the first-filed Section 301 complaint from HMTX Industries and Jasco Products as the lead case, and to stay the roughly 3,700 other actions while HMTX is litigated, blogged law firm Neville Peterson Thursday. “More than two months after the HMTX case was filed, however, there has been surprisingly little action,” other than “some minor skirmishing from some plaintiffs,” it said. Some litigants favor picking a complaint other than HMTX as the lead case or joining it with other actions that raise constitutional challenges to the Section 301 tariffs, it said. Still others argue HMTX should proceed on its own, since the CIT “will not consider constitutional issues if cases can be decided on non-constitutional grounds,” it said. DOJ’s deadline to file answers to the HMTX action “technically” has lapsed, it said: Though the CIT likely won’t hold DOJ “in default” for failing to respond, “the urgency for establishment of a case management plan is increasing.” Plaintiffs' attorneys on their own have established an “informal” steering committee to manage the case, it said, saying the committee “confers with some regularity.”

The lawyer who filed dozens of Section 301 complaints on a single day at the U.S. Court of International Trade (see 2011200023) said his spate of filings had more to do with the constraints of working remotely during the pandemic than any rush to meet the court’s filing deadlines. Attorney Elon Pollack of Stein Shostak in Los Angeles filed most of the new cases on behalf of importers with List 4A tariff exposure, leaving List 3 claims out of his complaints. He designated Aug. 20, 2019, when the List 4A notice was published in the Federal Register, as the date the court’s two-year statute of limitations clock began ticking. He said he believes the two-year statute of limitations runs from the date an importer actually paid the tariffs, not when the duties were announced. All Pollack’s complaints, like the roughly 3,700 others filed since Sept. 10, allege that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative overstepped its 1974 Trade Act authority by imposing retaliatory tariffs against the Chinese and that the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by running sloppy rulemakings that lacked transparency. The Section 301 litigation seeks to get the rulemakings vacated and the tariffs refunded. Pollack said his cases will be included under whatever test case and procedures the court designates for the Section 301 litigation. His filings list the first-filed suit by HTMX in the Section 301 litigation as a related case.

The U.S. Court of International Trade granted Akin Gump’s motion to amend the summons in its first-filed Section 301 complaint to include Jasco Products as the suit’s newest plaintiff (see 2011240030). Though the CIT has assigned no judges to this case or the roughly 3,700 complaints that followed, Tuesday’s order (in Pacer), the first issued by the court in the 3-month-old docket, was signed by Judge Lee Gordon. All the complaints allege that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative overstepped its 1974 Trade Act authority by imposing Lists 3 and 4A tariffs as retaliatory against the Chinese and that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act by running sloppy rulemakings that lacked transparency. All seek to get the Lists 3 and 4A rulemakings vacated and the tariffs refunded.

Akin Gump moved to amend the summons served on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and other defendants in the first-filed Section 301 litigation at the U.S. Court of International Trade to include Jasco Products as an additional plaintiff. The firm filed its original complaint Sept. 10 on behalf of HMTX Industries, and amended it Sept. 21 to include Jasco (see 2009210047) but never amended the summons, said its motion (in Pacer) Tuesday. Akin Gump said DOJ has no objection to the motion. The HMTX litigation spawned roughly 3,700 complaints alleging USTR overstepped its 1974 Trade Act authority by imposing retaliatory tariffs against the Chinese and violated the Administrative Procedure Act by running sloppy rulemakings that lacked transparency. All the suits seek to get the Lists 3 and 4A rulemakings vacated and the duties refunded.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument Jan. 25 at 9:30 a.m. about Environmental Health Trust, Consumers for Safe Cell Phones and Children’s Health Defense seeking to force the FCC to reopen examination of RF exposure rules (see 2007300056), said a Friday order (in Pacer). “The FCC refused to meaningfully assess the vast amount of reliable peer-reviewed scientific and medical evidence generated after 1996 indicating current and potential health risks from currently-authorized exposures, and gave inappropriate weight to unreliable and conflicted views and opinions by industry-supported sources,” plaintiffs say (in Pacer) in docket 20-1025. The FCC rightly declined last year to initiate a rulemaking to consider revising limits, the agency says (in Pacer). “The agency reasonably relied on the expert advice of other federal agencies and standard-setting bodies and the record as a whole to conclude that no evidence of such effects exists and that no changes in the limits were warranted. That conclusion was neither arbitrary nor capricious, nor does it constitute the ‘rarest and most compelling of circumstances’ in which this Court would disturb an agency’s decision.”

The judge in DOJ and states’ antitrust case against Google wants to plot an initial schedule before the December holidays, said U.S. District Court in Washington Judge Amit Mehta on a telephonic status conference Wednesday. Mehta asked parties to file Dec. 11 their proposed case management order and outstanding issues for the judge to resolve. It mightn’t include a concrete trial date if parties are planning to seek summary judgment, he said. The judge scheduled an 11 a.m. Dec. 18 telephonic hearing on the proposed scheduling order. Before committing to a schedule, Google wants more information about the third-party investigation done by the government, including a list of the third parties that provided information, said Google attorney John Schmidtlein. DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer said that kind of information isn’t usually given until discovery starts but noted the government plans to provide information including 100 potential witnesses in its initial disclosure due Friday. Mehta agreed that disclosure should provide Google sufficient information about the extent of the investigation. Wednesday's conference followed an Oct. 30 meeting (see 2010300027).