one of the highlights of my sporting career when the browns one ever done anything said market is the cable and cable the nationwide where you have to have your cable when you call come in and they install the cable and not a word and what actually happens is you go from assuming it's on the line not on the ground you go to the you go to hook up with a cap and on the line from there you then go to the house where where the their the charge to the consumer six point five percent so there was no logical reason to do this because it didn't benefit anyone because the cost of cable and installation rose six point five percent and the a cross the country boeing looking at the northeast region and what they did is they sent all these cable companies in build up the infrastructure had decisive what they did was they according to the pine product would no your honor but we got a note from learn be prepared be prepared to talk about it the book will talk about that so i later on what is your op what was up and spoke well the comcast would be the hub so that would be the horizontal and then and then the vertical would be the insulation and so what actually happened was competence went in with its monopsony power and went and they decide who they want to buy from but when they were buying they set it up for companies to go in and then they destroy tell the spokes and that then you would look at it as a pro se a per se analysis and even under the boat the concept of price case and also the jefferson parish case i believe using that you have a pine agreement here you clearly have a tie in with agreement between comcast and decisive where they then go in and comcast goes and and they bill everything the gaffer in other words there's nothing stopping cable insulation company to do this on their own to go in path and accept that comcast is not allowing the tap into their lines and then they run it as per my description early on as hell it's how it operates and in fact the cable insulation comes could actually bill the consumer directly but doing that so all they have to do is pick up the box like they're doing it now going in going in getting the box setting it up and they could build directly instead would comcast doesn't save a time product they put the two markets together what they do is they put this is two markets together you get a contrast you  absolutely have to the one might argue pragmatically don't most customers want to use this or no your honor and if and if you look at statistics people don't like comp their family went to services and if you look at the market the over worked  all the other cable installation services the labor and street these people are overworked and the rate of return to the consumer is really poor in fact they cover decisive because of their poor performance and this to poor performance that people people have the right to have a choice and want to destroy competition and you don't give people the right to have the choice and you put it together and then you add value you charge more because what you're doing is you're installing it on it give it to me and i then send it to the consumer they have money on and so there is no benefit even under rule reason there's there's no benefit to that people have a right to choose and when they totally the this isn't about weather at the ball not have a quest destroying competition and they destroying please bill daley women they that the market they totally eliminated this market of the cable installation now and other areas outside this region there are other companies you could go to like for five million to forty eight million in a matter of a couple years just just on this now so if you're talking about tying agreements with exclusivity that would seem to be jefferson parish yes you are but that's not necessarily what your theory what your theory keep if you do say monopsony and you can go back to it but it's it appears that there's a problem making that claim and cable installation and when they hire someone back that gets rid of thirty five percent of their performance it shows that that the consumer to getting bad service your honor so we did say in our complaint that people are unhappy with what comcast it says in our complaint we cited the sort of several articles that people just totally unhappy with comcast and because of that it's a because they give you a total package they gave you they give you installation madeup callback you have to come back whether they perform properly how many times the people have to call you know when's my guy coming the whole cop when's this coming i have to be at my house for how many hours a that would they did here is they used by help because they wanted to create diversity and they were the only and so they need an african american company because at that time they were buying power on one and when they were buying time any any more african american companies by eliminating or cutting down on the number of companies what they did was they increased their diversity from i believe it was like eight percent in one percent like twenty three percent by not adding anyone so so by by cutting it down by cutting down the number of companies you deceive people saying all now my diverse i've twenty three percent of market if the argument are waived then why did you only spend less than a page or your honor i you you look at where you think you're stronger arguments are and you  to proceed with then then the reverse discrimination case and when you destroy each so many companies as they did the destruction of competition with all of these companies we thought that it was more important for comcast to understand it take a knife go and just destroy the competition in the relevant market and just run over people put them in bankruptcy would you mean the way you can talk it up with the understand the into the intell installation of cable they would have a right to do that i mean there's not a problem with doing that because when you have so many companies come in or you're doing if you if you understand the process is hooking up to the line then going to the demarches own and then and then cutting it out and picking up on contests and say hook it up turn it on and so if you have a list of several companies you can choose from you can save money it benefits to consumer competition benefits consumers because you now have a right to choose and people then right now the consumer has no right to determine that is correct is best because they have the tying agreement they have the agreement between comcast and decisive and so what they do is it's they they bill it that one bill you get your bill you get your cable services and then you get your installation i pile that people saying until it's installation it's all of them want so you get one bill i'm balance installations a year which is a lot and so consumers would be better off if they have a choice like anything else this is different judge greenberg i think that's a wonderful question and it's a question that i've asked myself it goes directly to the question of whether the point of supply a viable and i trust relevant geographic market purposes of their claims and what you'll see is that the allegations really vary wildly and are often inconsistent i'd point you to page five of the plaintiff's brief which i think is the very definition of gerrymandering if you if you look at that almost a half a page long description of what they contend is the relevant geographic market it winds up being a little bit sarcastic your i don't mean to be but it really winds past a couple rivers under a bridge and turns left in a book i thought they were that there was a contest of market power in the freedom keystone and beltway regions so your honor because actually if i could turn to this specific issue i think it's a little bit more complicated than that though they said  vision one point but you could take out western new england and greater boston and you would end up with what i understand is freedom keystone of beltway regions so your are what they do page five of their briefly describe what they contend is comcast northern edition and to refer to it the northern division and they define that as consisting of or at least including five different regions and the name what those regions are then you get the paragraph sixty two of the complaint that's appendix one forty seven and they say the comcast agreed with defendants telling decisive to allocate regional cable installation markets portal in three distinct regions within that division then you get the paragraph one seventy of their complaint that appendix one sixty four and they allege quote defendants agreed to allocate the market for cable installation in pennsylvania maryland virginia and west virginia not the northern division not any of the reasons that they mentioned earlier  not in the record your honor i'm not sure i can tell you accurately as a fact well when you look at the freedom keystone and beltway regions in those regions that it was excluding the boston and western new england area city said they must do and this brings us back to the fundamental one of the fundamental problems of their case and this cuts across the various theories that we've heard about today there's little bit of discussion on timing i want to come and i think i've graduated now we have lost a law school class here but the point is there in here that plaintiffs do not have any trust claim they have not suffered and i trust injury they don't have and i trust the ending if they are not harmed as a result of harm to competition their harm must flow from harm to competition in this case there was competition for comcast business there were a number of people insolation at companies who sought comcast business two of them one in this area two of them did not go to did did not are suing let's deal with this theoretically let's assume that there is a market that can be identified and let's assume for the moment you don't have to agree with this comcast has also is consequential because if they were to brings those claims now they would be barred by the statue imitation again i want to get i want to get to the merits of the next graphic assuming they got past the statue limitations which they cannot hoover decision to instruct them and i trust injury is a requirement for any claim with a baton claim or something else they would fail because they have failed the police and have not suffered any trust injury because their harm flows from the result of competition they lost out on one customer's business not harm to competition itself but if they were able to get past the i trust injury hurdle which they cannot then you look at the merits of the time case this is not the traditional time case we're not talking about to your hypothetical i'm going to go outside the record but i think we've all received stuff installation so we've all we up so the answer is yes to a point there's installation that could be done by her parties it could be done by you or me and all homes compact proprietary network and the consequences of somebody doing improperly could have a broad impact on services generally so then you have service concerns and you and we get into pro competitive justifications for a but again you won't find any suggestion in the complaint that either that that customers want broader choice you won't find any suggestion in the complaint product well again it it depends again this goes back to why they don't have stand where it's the this is or if you have a jefferson parish and the time product was the surgical procedures and the tie product was  elegy and here you have the timing product as cable service and the type product just cable installation why do we're forgetting we'll get to the market in  standing in line i got i got i got it out there the allegation was that there was force you come to our hospital your wife forced to use our anesthesiology services there's no there's no allegation of forcing in this complaint and again with the possible exception that here can have your head in my hypothetical you've got in the market whatever it is there is seventy percent of it is is comcast related there is comcast control so it would again so the allegation i understand is the seventy percent and this is something that we've seen throughout this case and in the district court the low recognizes that one of the flaws in the players complaint is they confuse markets maybe they refer to market power in one market when they're trying to make a case in a distinct market and again what they haven't done even here now they have a problem defining a geographic relevance geographic and i trust market they also haven't gone through what queen  city excuse me says they had to do to plead irrelevant product line story so they've drawn a circle around comcast and said well if you want comcast comcast dominates comcast well that's a truism we heard a little bit today about cable about let's assume the source of the tow or the exclusive providers in an area whatever that area is isn't that the relevant geographic market for that area i would say that that is has to be defined by reference to where the sellers seek to sell in other words you have to consider reasonable substitute provider and what happened goods assumes that the teller decisive wherever the seller decides to sell the exclusive installers are decisive well but now you're on maybe i wasn't clear i apologize you can look to see who they look where they look to sell their services to whom they look to sell their services and now i'm talking about talking about the plane of c the fact is that you know that again this goes back to the what do you know origin of this complaint was simply that he saw a single customer it was a valuable customer to them they competed for that business and they lost that doesn't mean that they can't install other things they want to install this is an improperly and narrowly defined market if you say we want to define we are more it is the installation of comcast cable in three regions one of contests divisions without regard how well you know who lives ok you're on the other side now you know how would you draft a complaint that would pass muster and what how would you go about defining the relevant geographic market initially so i could get out so they don't have an interest i think i don't know asking you if you're on the other side now so i'm asking you to draft the relevant complaint no i understand what i'm saying is that i couldn't do it because they don't have a viable and i trust claim they were hurt as a result of competition competition was not hurt if specifically on trying to map out so you would say to him you've got to go elsewhere you can't come to me i'd die every day  i'd turn down cases that i don't believe in and this is one they simply don't have a case like that they've had three complaints they've had three opportunities to try the district court judgment to vary their opinions if it's doing thirty installers in the market and you're down to in a hypothetical case down to one and the provider controls seventy to eighty percent of the market you're saying there's no viable and i trust claimed it can be made so again if you're talking about the seventy eight used by references to purchaser who has market power and so in the in the area in the market in which they operate what's interesting here is that so comcast then this goes back to the gist i think this is a fundamental point especially worth reading this is from for opinion and the district court judge said comcast has no incentive to conspire with its own sub contractors to eliminate competition in the overall market and increase the prices for the services it was by  independent basis for granting our motion to dismiss and if you look at actually what they alleged first of all there's no allegations of an agreement between the parties at all second there are affirmative allegations in the complaint that were fud agreement that providers from home arms things there's no you don't think there could be there could be in the example i gave thirty instance in stores you've eliminated twenty nine and you must use our  installers and you control seventy to eighty percent of the market you don't think there could be a possible jefferson parish kind of going can happen so i think there are a number of reasons again look at ask yourself what is profit from using its market power in the tying market to get their vantage in the time market either to to to its achieve market power in that market or to extract super competitive prices in that market we know that comcast does some installation itself as i said beyond that one trunk line it goes out to the street consumers themselves can install or they can contract with other third parties now now this is in the record you are you question but the fact is there are choices and one of the things when you when you look at cox cable or you look at jefferson parish one of the questions is is there really a separate our market is being hyper you want to look ok the consumers want to buy it separately do the providers want to sell it separately is they're forcing why again none of those allegations are in the complaint in fact all those propositions are coming are contradicted by the allegations you have made it would seem and you know in this case comcast which still charge what it's charging therefore it's margin would be greater by going with this lowest cost is still a shoe provider and you say that you must use this is solution provider it would seem that right and as you observed there the players claims fail because there was no market power because it patient groups there were about the hospital down the road but one of the examples that the court used in that in the supreme court used in that case was flour and sugar and examples well you know if you go to buy sugar and you're forced to buy flour then there's there's forcing going on you're being forced to buy something that you don't want to hear again no allegations but also common sense tells you that there's no separate market for paid for comcast cable installation apart from the desire to access comcast cable so what we have here with what they're saying is is i want i don't want that particular  before is really some day the next case got up your are really do think so i just i mean just to be clear aside from the fact they haven't played aside from the fact that they don't have that they couldn't because the session limitations they just don't have standing wife first thing i want to do is clear up some fallacies number one decisive did not win the r k a because the people which is pled the the people in the field that would be turning which companies they would use said they want to terminate powell and decisive and that is clearly in our brief the second the second thing is your honor and west decisive had an agreement what then because what they did was they sent all the cable companies in to build up the ambush there out of the he also did it gave them the information how many trucks they needed how many people they needed so what they did is they had a they had an agreement with this size of just pure logic says that if you're going to do this mess mess elimination  that because if you're going to go into all of these areas in this show cable comp information companies when in the build up the infrastructure spend hundreds of thousands of power they all went bankrupt because they went in and did it so now decisive comes in the infrastructure built and you go in and you take over in these regions and freedom region and the in the house burglary so these progress one goes with the other you can't you can't separate them and to say that oh it's going to be bad if you hook up to the cable that's that's another red herring because if you look at the labor did these these people over worked i mean it's in the complaint i know it's not far and i don't want to get bogged down into labor and everything but read it so that's a red herring because these people who work so there to prove it to trial your honor what i'm going to prove with the trial is they were mean and they destroyed competition they put thirty forty fifty companies out of business they destroyed and that there is no place to go only they are the only person in these regions it can't go to comcast campiness is the only provider put in most part of the cable services which means the cable installation industry it goes hand in hand that's why pine works so much because it's a hand in hand you can't separate the way they're doing it won't go up should probably care to have to do i mean there's comcast have to  companies they're very competent many of them more competent than who they hire they had there were there were seven they went down to yes so i mean and most of them alp performed the two that they chose because the one manipulated the did they destroy competition no one got a benefit except comcast because it increases point five percent so so you are destroying competition by hiring joe your brother in law ok and you're raising the prices and