From the monthly archives:

March 2004

Amazon, Borders Face Market-Division Claims

March 31, 2004

According to this story at CNet News, last week a federal district judge in San Francisco said that a private antitrust claim against Amazon and Borders, for allegedly divvying up portions of the on-line book market between them, could proceed to trial. (The judge dismissed a companion price-fixing claim as “ludicrous on its face.”) The [...]

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When the Feds Call: Lessons Learned from the Martha Stewart Case

March 10, 2004

Well, Martha Stewart has been convicted, as someone said, of covering up a crime that the feds couldn’t prove had been committed. More specifically, she was convicted (generally speaking) of making false statements to federal investigators. What kind of practical lessons does this offer for day-to-day life in the business world?

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Martha Stewart Juror Says Her Changing a Phone Message Brought Her Down

March 8, 2004

This AP story reports some post-trial comments by jurors in the Martha Stewart case. It seems that one of the key pieces of evidence was testimony that Stewart had tried to change a phone message from her stockbroker: Other jurors said Stewart’s assistant Ann Armstrong, who reluctantly testified that Stewart tried to alter a phone [...]

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Martha Stewart – Targeted to Send a Message?

March 7, 2004

Today’s New York Times has this article (registration required) about possible reasons that Martha Stewart might have been prosecuted more vigorously than had she not been a celebrity. The article quotes a former prosecutor about something I’d heard before, namely that prosecutors especially like to go after high-profile people pour encourager les autres (see here [...]

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Bowling for Dollars: Junk FAXer Settles for $1M+

March 5, 2004

According to an article at law.com: A bowling business that sent out as many as 352,000 unsolicited faxes will settle a class action for up to $1 million cash and $1.5 million in coupons. However, it’s not clear how much of the money will be paid out. The settlement came under criticism from a lawyer [...]

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