In perhaps the most famous exchange of the proceeding, Jackson all but shouted down Microsoft executive Bob Muglia after he continued to quibble with the judge over the meaning of a sentence in an e-mail written by Bill Gates. When the time comes for your counsel to take you on redirect examination, you may then offer this information. Jackson, visibly perturbed by the witness' parsing of the document, called an unscheduled, 10-minute break. Markets that now move faster still threaten to do the same with this proceeding. In this trial, it is the endgame that will be the most difficult for Microsoft.
Lawyers routinely expect judges to follow precedent and issue rulings in two parts on the same day.
The first part is the Findings of Fact in which the judge lays out what he believes actually happened. The second part is the Conclusions of Law, in which the judge spells out the laws he thinks apply, and how. Only then do most antitrust combatants have a chance to say what the Judge should do to fix the problems he sees. But Jackson did something else. Instead of issuing facts and conclusions of law together, he separated the two parts.