Judge rather than jury will render verdict in upcoming antitrust trial
FILE - A sign is shown on a Google building at their campus in Mountain View, Calif., on Sept. 24, 2019. On Friday, June 7, 2024, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that a judge rather than a jury will decide whether Google violated federal antitrust laws by building a monopoly on the technology that powers online advertising. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A judge rather than a jury will decide whether Google violated federal antitrust laws by building a monopoly on the technology that powers online advertising.
The decision Friday by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema was a defeat for the Justice Department, which sought a jury trial when it filed the case last year in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
But the government’s right to a jury trial was based largely on the fact that it sought monetary damages to compensate federal agencies that purchased online ads and claimed they were overcharged as a result of Google’s anticompetitive conduct. The dollar values associated with those claims, though, were relatively small — less than $750,000 — and far less significant than other remedies sought by the government, which might include forcing Google to sell off parts of its advertising technology.
As a result, Google last month took the extraordinary step of writing the government a check for more than $2 million — the $750,000 in damages claimed by the government multiplied by three because antitrust cases allow for trebled damages.
