Staples has sensationally decided not to call any witnesses in its hearing versus the FTC on its attempt to acquire Office Depot.
The FTC finished presenting its case on Monday, and Staples was expected to begin its case for the defence this morning.
However, Staples’ lawyer Diane Sullivan told Judge Emmet Sullivan that the office supplier would not be calling any witnesses and asked the judge to make a ruling based on the evidence already heard over the past couple of weeks.
She said that the FTC had “failed utterly” in presenting its case and that the government’s antitrust body’s case was “fatally flawed”.
It is not immediately clear what aspect of the FTC’s case she is referring to, but it had already been suggested that Staples would call for the case to be dismissed following the revelation that the FTC had asked its witness, Amazon Business’s Prentis Wilson, to sign documents that he admitted to the judge were “not true”.
In addition, under cross-examination on Monday, the FTC’s ‘star’ witness, economist Carl Shapiro, admitted that his market examination had been limited to a sample of just 60 companies, and he appeared to suggest that ink and toner – not covered in the FTC’s market definition – did indeed form part of the addressable market.
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Washington (DC), USA
