The demand for the FTC chair to recuse herself from the Google and DoubleClick antitrust review yielded a surprising little twist.
In their motion for disqualification of Deborah Platt Majoras, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center cited a newly discovered fact about the case. Majoras’ husband, John Majoras, works for a law firm retained by DoubleClick.
John Majoras is not listed as one of the five attorneys DC law firm Jones Day has advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues. However, searching the Jones Day site, and Google, shows references to DoubleClick no longer appear on the firm’s website.
A query through the Jones Day site search displayed this item as one of four results:
3. Jones Day – Services – Antitrust Mergers/Joint Ventures – Experience
…DTE Energy Company. DoubleClick Inc. Acquisition by DoubleClick Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition…in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc. H&R… http://www.jonesday.com/services/services_experience.aspx?
AdvancedServices=7deaa765-88f7-4368-8db7-443695819af3
12/7/2007 1:10:31 AM
Click the link, and DoubleClick does not appear in the resulting list. We expect this could be a simple administrative oversight, and look forward to hearing it has been corrected.
But the Jones Day webmaster will have more work to do. For one thing, this link should lead directly to a summary of Jones Day’s experience with DoubleClick. It’s blank, but you can see it in the CDD/EPIC motion.
We checked each of the five attorneys’ profiles on the site. EPIC and CDD listed Joe Sims, Thomas Jestaedt, Alexandre G. Verheyden, Michael S. McFalls, and Chris Ahern as the legal eagles providing counsel.
Each of those attorneys once had this listed in their Professional Biography – Experience:
DoubleClick Inc.
Acquisition by DoubleClick
Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc.
In each case, that reference has been scrubbed from the Jones Day site. One would imagine an attorney would want to tout being part of a multi-billion-dollar deal involving one of the biggest name brand companies on the planet.
Not at Jones Day, though.
(UPDATE: A DoubleClick representative responded to this story via email: “Simpson Thacher has been DoubleClick’s outside counsel since July of 2005 and was retained to represent it in all aspects of its proposed acquisition by Google, including with respect to United States antitrust matters. From the outset, Simpson Thacher has represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission and continues in that capacity. Jones Day has been engaged primarily with respect to European and other non-U.S. jurisdictions. Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the Commission on DoubleClick’s behalf.”)
