Veteran Antitrust Judge in the AT&T Fight

As AT&T prepares to defend its $39 billion deal for T-Mobile USA against a lawsuit by the Obama Administration, the two sides will face a judge who has refereed many big antitrust fights.

Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, in her 12 years on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, has overseen numerous antitrust cases brought by regulators, including one in which she ruled against the government. She has also presided over prominent matters like the trial of the disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement talks with Citigroup over subprime mortgages. The Justice Department’s lawsuit against AT&T is one of her biggest cases to date. It is the Obama administration’s most significant effort to halt a landscape-altering transaction, one that would combine two of the nation’s biggest cellphone service providers. And the tenor of both the Justice Department’s complaint and AT&T’s response suggests that a contentious brawl may be in the works, even as both sides leave open some possibility of a settlement. In a case this complex, with reams of market and technological data to consider, a jurist with experience presiding over antitrust matters may prove a boon for both parties.