Sprint Ordered to Hand Over Documents Sought by AT&T
The special master overseeing discovery on the various court challenges to AT&T/T-Mobile ordered Sprint Nextel to give AT&T various internal documents it has requested by Nov. 21. AT&T filed a subpoena for the Sprint documents Sept. 26. Last month, Special Master Richard Levie noted in the order, AT&T narrowed its document request to those necessary to refresh the record in the case. In a filing with the U.S. District Court in Washington last week, AT&T listed 47 continuing areas of interest, including whether Sprint has plans for a “business combination” with T-Mobile if the AT&T/T-Mobile deal is blocked in federal court.
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"Sprint asserts that AT&T’s ‘refresh’ request will cause Sprint to produce documents ... from May 2011 until the present” and will “result in production of approximately 440,000 additional pages of documents,” Levie wrote. AT&T responded that Sprint overstates the size of the document burden, he said. Levie agreed with AT&T that addressing its document request should not be burdensome for Sprint.
"In both a relative and absolute sense, 440,000 pages of documents are not overwhelming,” the order said. “Sprint has not produced a persuasive and detailed factual record regarding legal costs or costs in person-power for the refreshed review, and the mere facts of involvement of some additional custodians or some amount of necessary legal review are insufficient to demonstrate undue burden.”
The documents can be seen as critical to the case, Levie wrote, noting that the first round of documents Sprint submitted to the Department of Justice will be nine months old when a federal trial starts in February. “All markets are dynamic, but technology markets are notoriously volatile and, hence, very dynamic,” Levie said. “For example, Sprint has acquired the right to distribute the iPhone since its production to the DOJ. ... AT&T is entitled to discover what effect the iPhone and other events of the past few months have had on Sprint’s relevant market share.” A Sprint spokesman declined to comment Monday.
In another merger note, AT&T said the T-Mobile buy is likely to close “in the first half of 2012,” in a filing at the SEC (http://xrl.us/bmh3sr). That date is a few months later than its original target for closing the deal.
Meanwhile, the Media Access Project asked Gannett’s WUSA-TV, Washington, to stop running AT&T ads claiming the merger will “create as many as 96,000 jobs.” The study on which the ads are based projects a job gain of 55,000 to 96,000 “job years,” said MAP Senior Vice President Andrew Schwartzman. “'Job years’ are not ‘jobs,’ and certainly not ‘permanent jobs,'” he said. “Ninety-six thousand ‘job years’ would produce 96,000 jobs for only one year.” Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president, responded: “How odd for a group called the Media Access Project to be working to limit media access. Or free speech rights."
Sprint also complained about the ads in a letter to the FCC. “You can’t believe everything you see on TV,” Sprint wrote.