DoubleClick Goes MIA At FTC Chief's Old Law Firm

theodp writes "FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras has refused to recuse herself from the agency's review of Google's $3.1B DoubleClick acquisition, despite her current and past ties to DoubleClick law firm Jones Day. EPIC and the Center for Digital Democracy, which had requested her recusal, are keeping up the pressure as DoubleClick-related pages and references have been disappearing from Jones Day's website. Although the statement issued by the Chairwoman suggests Jones Day's DoubleClick representation is limited to the European Commission, the Google cache of one MIA document boasts: 'Jones Day is advising DoubleClick Inc., the digital marketing technology provider, on the international and US antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc.'"

Quite surprising

[gravesb]

I'm surprised she's willing to take this kind of risk, and I'm very surprised that Jones Day is aiding her. Its just one client, and one matter before the FTC. Better that she recuse herself and be able to go back to Jones Day with no issues of impropriety than to play games and face some bar action. Most states have more liberal conflict guidelines for government employees, but sometimes arguing the letter of the law isn't worth the PR cost.

Re:Privacy

[Janos421]

Not so sure: so far Google defense about privacy was "If you don't like our method, you don't have to use our services".
But if Googel acquire DoubleClick, you won't have choice, Google will gather information about you.

Re:Quite surprising

[hey!]

Or (d) she has a job to do. When you're named to the FTC, it's because your expertise is valued. She should be involved in everything unless theres a strong enough reason not to.

Agreed. However, you probably missed that we'd gotten past that point in the thread already, because we've already stipulated that she has the appearance of a conflict of interest -- and a strong one at that. Judges, after all, routinely recuse themselves in these situations. Surely they are chosen because their experience is considered valuable.

Getting the job done is the whole reason that people who are trusted to be neutral, such as judges or commissioners, recuse themselves. Doing their job requires that their rulings and actions be beyond any reasonably grounded question that they have an improper interest in the result. If any such question were not clearly resolved, the decision would be tainted, and surely gone over again. That's an expensive and disruptive way of not getting the job done. Recusing yourself is the right thing to do because valuable as your experience may be, it is almost never in practice irreplaceable.

[discussion of common law duties snipped]

Besides, you can't realistically have a rule against marriages between lawyers who work for firms on opposite sides of a transaction. Among large firms in any given city, there's an enormous number of cross-marriages. That rule would put them all out of business, and then how would two companies merge?

I think you're a little bit off the trail here.

You wouldn't prevent the lead lawyer for the defendant from arguing the case when he's married to a partner in the plaintiff's law firm. That's up to the defendant. If the lawyer doesn't reveal this tidbit to the defendant, that would be really, really bad on too many levels to name, starting with ethical violation and moving up through mistrial. But granted, you wouldn't prevent the defendant from going ahead with his lawyer, once he was duly informed. On the other hand, you'd sure expect the judge to recuse himself in that case, unless there was literally no other judge in town who could take the case. Especially if he himself were a former partner in that law firm.

The case for regulatory officials is even greater, since it is extremely likely that official will apply to his former law firm after his term in office expires. It's not exactly forthright to pretend the problem here is that this person has prior inside knowledge of the deal. That isn't the question at all. The question is whether she has a conflict of interest.