Thanks Nekrosoft13, and oqwarrior for this.
In three separate legal briefs filed Friday, a total of 34 states opposed a Microsoft motion that a federal judge should dismiss the remaining portion of its antitrust case.
Nine states and the District of Columbia return to court Monday to determine a remedy for the company's antitrust violations. But Microsoft had asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to dismiss the states' litigation, arguing that the states should not be allowed to set antitrust policy over the Justice Department. The Justice Department and nine other states settled the case in November.
Twenty-five additional states rallied Friday behind the nine litigating states--California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia--in an attempt to protect states' jurisdiction over antitrust matters.
Twenty-four of those additional states--Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the Commonwealth of Kentucky--filed a joint brief, saying they "take no position in this Memorandum on the merits of the underlying" antitrust case. New York filed a separate brief. The nine litigating states filed a brief of their own.
In their brief, the 24 states argued that the Clayton Act grants them the authority to continue a case "even when the federal government has proposed to settle a case. Congress has granted the states clear authority to proceed independently under Section 16, despite the fact that the federal government has chosen not to act, has proposed to settle a case, has in fact settled a case, or has taken the matter to trial." New York raised similar concerns.
News source: ZDNet News - 25 more states join fight against Microsoft
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