The fact that the divestiture conditions brought the merged party into compliance with the rule cannot be read as the sole basis for Commission action. The purpose of the conditions in this specific case, and the horizontal ownership limits in the general rule, are complementary rather than mutually dependent. It is impossible to square the Commission's reading of the merger Order in December 2000 with the suspension Order's utter silence on the question of the public interest ramifications just three months later. The Commission's severance of the divestiture deadlines from the transfer approval, as well as from the conditions themselves, manifestly violates that language. It is also entirely unclear by what authority the Commission ignores the factual bases for imposition of the conditions, and by what legal authority a non-final decision of the D.C. Circuit compels removal of conditions that went unchallenged by the parties.
Several points bear noting.
First, the merger Order unambiguously intended the conditions, including their deadlines, be non-severable. The express use of non-severable conditions constitutes explicit proof that the merger Order could not function sensibly in their absence. Second, no mandate has issued in Time Warner so the decision is non-final. Treating the deadlines as severable from the transfer approval, and severable from the divestiture conditions because of the Time Warner decision, eviscerates the logic of the merger Order as well as the court's reasoning when it remanded the general rule for further action. The language of the suspension Order demonstrates how strained its reliance on the non-final decision in Time Warner is.