Source: https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/motion-and-memorandum-united-states-support-entry-final-judgment-11
Timestamp: 2019-03-23 21:37:31
Document Index: 540922113

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 16', '§ 18', '§ 18', '§ 16', '§ 16', '§ 16', '§ 16', '§ 16', '§ 16']

Pursuant to Section 2(b) of the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act, 15 U.S.C. § 16(b)-(h) ("APPA" or "Tunney Act"), the United States moves for entry of the proposed Final Judgment (attached as Exhibit A) filed in this civil antitrust case. Defendants, Pearson plc and Pearson Education Inc. (collectively "Pearson") and Reed Elsevier PLC, Reed Elsevier NV, and Harcourt Assessment Inc. (collectively "Reed Elsevier") have stipulated to the entry of the proposed Final Judgment upon compliance with the APPA and do not object to entry of this proposed Final Judgment without a hearing. The Competitive Impact Statement ("CIS"), filed by the United States on January 24, 2008, explains why entry of the proposed Final Judgment is in the public interest. The United States is filing with this motion a Certificate of Compliance (attached as Exhibit B), which sets forth the steps taken by the parties to comply with all applicable provisions of the APPA and certifies that the statutory waiting periods have expired. Thus, the proposed Final Judgment may be entered at this time without further hearing if the Court determines that entry is in the public interest. Entry of the proposed Final Judgment would terminate this action, except that the Court would retain jurisdiction to construe, modify, or enforce the provisions of the proposed Final Judgment and to punish violations thereof.
A.	Pre-Complaint Investigation
On or about May 4, 2007, and amended on May 21, 2007, Pearson and Reed Elsevier signed a sale and purchase agreement for Pearson to acquire all of the outstanding voting securities of Harcourt Assessment, Inc. ("Harcourt"), as well as additional Reed Elsevier assets, for approximately $950 million in cash. For the next eight months, the United States Department of Justice ("Department") conducted an extensive, detailed investigation into the likely competitive effects of the Pearson/Reed Elsevier transaction. As part of this investigation, the Department obtained substantial documents and information from the merging parties and issued voluntary requests for information to third parties. The Department received and considered more than10 boxes of hard-copy material and more than 100,000 electronic files. The Department conducted more than 90 interviews with customers, competitors, and other individuals with knowledge of the industry. The investigative staff carefully analyzed the information provided and thoroughly considered all of the issues presented. The Department considered the potential competitive effects of the transaction in the markets for individually-administered standardized norm-referenced comprehensive clinical tests (hereafter "clinical tests"), as well as in other markets, by obtaining information about these products from customers, competitors, and other knowledgeable parties. The Department concluded that Pearson's acquisition of Harcourt would be likely to lessen competition substantially in the markets for adaptive behavior, speech and language, and adult abnormal personality clinical tests within the meaning of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 18.
Clinical tests are used by psychologists and clinicians, among others, to test for and to diagnose individuals with certain disorders or disabilities, as well as to identify individuals at risk for such disorders or disabilities. Clinical tests can also be used to develop and provide intervention strategies for, and to monitor the progress of treatments for, such disorders or disabilities. Non-standardized, non-norm-referenced tests (e.g., charts published in books or journals, single-scale tests, and free material available on the internet) are inferior to clinical tests because they do not provide the same levels of validity and reliability, nor can they be used in many situations in which a clinical test is required. Publishers, including Pearson and Harcourt, develop, edit, standardize, norm-reference, market, and sell clinical tests for a wide range of disorders and disabilities.
There are no economic substitutes for adaptive behavior, speech and language, and adult abnormal personality clinical tests, respectively. A small but significant increase in the prices of these clinical tests would not cause customers to substitute other types of tests, or to otherwise reduce their purchases of these clinical tests, in sufficient quantities so as to make such price increases unprofitable.
As explained more fully in the Complaint and CIS, the acquisition of Harcourt by Pearson would have substantially lessened competition in the development, marketing, sale, and distribution of adaptive behavior, speech and language, and adult abnormal personality clinical tests. In the affected markets, the acquisition would have eliminated actual and potential competition between Pearson and Harcourt; and prices likely would have increased and innovation likely would have declined. Moreover, successful entry into the markets for adaptive behavior, speech and language, and adult abnormal personality clinical tests is difficult, time consuming, and costly. Therefore, the Department filed its Complaint alleging competitive harm in these clinical test markets and sought a remedy that would ensure that such harm is prevented.
B.	The Proposed Final Judgment
On January 24, 2008, the United States filed its Complaint in this matter alleging that the proposed acquisition of Harcourt by Pearson would violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 18. Simultaneously with the filing of the Complaint, the United States filed a proposed Final Judgment and a Hold Separate Stipulation and Order signed by plaintiff and defendants, consenting to the entry of the proposed Final Judgment after compliance with the requirements of the Tunney Act. Pursuant to those requirements, the United States also filed its CIS.
The proposed Final Judgment in this case is designed to preserve competition in the development, marketing, sale, and distribution of adaptive behavior, speech and language, and adult abnormal personality clinical tests. The proposed Final Judgment requires the divestiture of the following assets: (1) Harcourt's adaptive behavior clinical test, the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System; (2) Harcourt's adult abnormal personality clinical test, the Emotional Assessment System, which is under development; and (3) in the speech and language clinical test market, either Pearson's Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language and the Oral and Written Language Scales or Harcourt's Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals.
The APPA requires a sixty-day period for the submission of public comments on a proposed Final Judgment. See 15 U.S.C. § 16(b). In compliance with the APPA, the United States filed the CIS on January 24, 2008; published the proposed Final Judgment and CIS in the Federal Register on February 8, 2008 (United States v. Pearson plc, 73 Fed. Reg. 7593); and published summaries of the terms of the proposed Final Judgment and CIS, together with directions for the submission of written comments relating to the proposed Final Judgment, in The Washington Post for seven days beginning on February 16, 2008 and ending on February 22, 2008.
The sixty-day period for public comments ended on April 22, 2008. The Division did not receive any comments. As recited in the Certificate of Compliance, all the requirements of the APPA now have been satisfied. It is therefore appropriate for the Court to make the public interest determination required by 15 U.S.C. § 16(e) and to enter the Final Judgment.
III.	STANDARD FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW UNDER THE APPA
The Clayton Act, as amended by the APPA, requires that proposed consent judgments in antitrust cases brought by the United States be subject to a sixty-day comment period, after which the Court shall determine whether entry of the proposed Final Judgment "is in the public interest." 15 U.S.C. § 16(e)(1). In making that determination, the court, in accordance with the statute as amended in 2004,(1) is required to consider:
(B)	the impact of entry of such judgment upon competition in the relevant market or markets, upon the public generally and individuals alleging specific injury from the violations set forth in the complaint including consideration of the public benefit, if any, to be derived from a determination of the issues at trial.
As the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has held, under the APPA a court considers, among other things, the relationship between the remedy secured and the specific allegations set forth in the government's complaint, whether the decree is sufficiently clear, whether enforcement mechanisms are sufficient, and whether the decree may positively harm third parties. See Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1458-62. With respect to the adequacy of the relief secured by the decree, a court may not "engage in an unrestricted evaluation of what relief would best serve the public." United States v. BNS, Inc., 858 F.2d 456, 462 (9th Cir. 1988) (citing United States v. Bechtel Corp., 648 F.2d 660, 666 (9th Cir. 1981)); see also Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1460-62. Courts have held that:
Bechtel, 648 F.2d at 666 (emphasis added) (citations omitted).(2) In making its public interest determination, a district court "must accord deference to the government's predictions about the efficacy of its remedies, and may not require that the remedies perfectly match the alleged violations because this may only reflect underlying weakness in the government's case or concessions made during negotiation." SBC Commc'ns, 489 F. Supp. 2d at 17; see also Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1461 (noting need for courts to be "deferential to the government's predictions as to the effect of the proposed remedies"); United States v. Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., 272 F. Supp. 2d 1, 6 (D.D.C. 2003) (noting that the court should grant due respect to the United States' prediction as to the effect of proposed remedies, its perception of the market structure, and its views of the nature of the case).
Moreover, the Court's role under the APPA is limited to reviewing the remedy in relationship to the violations that the United States has alleged in its Complaint, and does not authorize the Court to "construct [its] own hypothetical case and then evaluate the decree against that case." Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1459. Because the "court's authority to review the decree depends entirely on the government's exercising its prosecutorial discretion by bringing a case in the first place," it follows that "the court is only authorized to review the decree itself," and not to "effectively redraft the complaint" to inquire into other matters that the United States did not pursue. Id. at 1459-60. As this Court recently confirmed in SBC Communications, courts "cannot look beyond the complaint in making the public interest determination unless the complaint is drafted so narrowly as to make a mockery of judicial power." 489 F. Supp. 2d at 15. In its 2004 amendments, Congress made clear its intent to preserve the practical benefits of utilizing consent decrees in antitrust enforcement, adding the unambiguous instruction "[n]othing in this section shall be construed to require the court to conduct an evidentiary hearing or to require the court to permit anyone to intervene." 15 U.S.C. § 16(e)(2). This instruction explicitly writes into the statute the standard intended by the Congress that enacted the Tunney Act in 1974 , as Senator Tunney then explained: "[t]he court is nowhere compelled to go to trial or to engage in extended proceedings which might have the effect of vitiating the benefits of prompt and less costly settlement through the consent decree process." 119 Cong. Rec. 24,598 (1973) (statement of Senator Tunney). Rather, the procedure for the public interest determination is left to the discretion of the court, with the recognition that the court's "scope of review remains sharply proscribed by precedent and the nature of Tunney Act proceedings." SBC Commc'ns, 489 F. Supp. 2d at 11.(3)
For the reasons set forth in this Motion and Memorandum and in the CIS, the United States respectfully requests the Court find that the proposed Final Judgment is in the public interest and enter the Final Judgment without further hearings.
1. The 2004 amendments substituted "shall" for "may" in directing relevant factors for the court to consider and amended list of factors to focus on competitive considerations and to address potentially ambiguous judgment terms. Compare 15 U.S.C. § 16(e) (2004), with 15 U.S.C. § 16(e)(1) (2006); see also United States v. SBC Commc'ns, Inc., 489 F. Supp. 2d 1, 11 (D.D.C. 2007) (concluding that the 2004 amendments "effected minimal changes" to Tunney Act review).
2. Cf. BNS, 858 F.2d at 464 (holding that the court's "ultimate authority under the [APPA] is limited to approving or disapproving the consent decree"); United States v. Gillette Co., 406 F. Supp. 713, 716 (D. Mass. 1975) (noting that, in this way, the court is constrained to "look at the overall picture not hypercritically, nor with a microscope, but with an artist's reducing glass"), aff'd sub nom. Maryland v. United States, 460 U.S. 1001 (1983). See generally Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1461 (discussing whether "the remedies [obtained in the decree are] so inconsonant with the allegations charged as to fall outside of the 'reaches of the public interest'").
3. See United States v. Enova Corp., 107 F. Supp. 2d 10, 17 (D.D.C. 2000) (noting that the "Tunney Act expressly allows the court to make its public interest determination on the basis of the competitive impact statement and response to comments alone"); S. Rep. No. 93-298, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., at 6 (1973) ("Where the public interest can be meaningfully evaluated simply on the basis of briefs and oral arguments, that is the approach that should be utilized."); United States v. Mid-Am. Dairymen, Inc., 1977-1 Trade Cas. (CCH) 61,508, at 71,980 (W.D. Mo. 1977) ("[T]he Court, in making its public interest finding, should . . . carefully consider the explanations of the government in order to determine whether those explanations are reasonable under the circumstances.").
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