Word: christensen
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...spectators at the hearings in Tulsa's federal court last week could make much sense of the proceedings. Even Presiding Judge A. Sherman Christensen seemed more than a little confused. Less than a month after finding International Business Machines Corp. in violation of antitrust statutes and ordering it to pay its struggling rival, Telex Corp., a record $352.5 million in damages (TIME, Oct. 1), Christensen developed second thoughts and sent the whole complex legal wrangle almost back to Square 1. Before the week was over, he changed course again and announced that he might be able soon to make...
...Christensen had only himself to blame for his troubles. Instead of prudently issuing separate rulings on the merits of the suit and the size of the damages, he had attempted to settle the case all at once. In his original ruling, Christensen figured that certain "predatory" practices by IBM had damaged Telex to the tune of $117.5 million, a figure that he then tripled in accordance with antitrust law. But in this rush to judgment, he ruefully admitted last week, he had underestimated a crucial factor: much of Telex's potential business came from marketing disc drives and other...
...Barr, who contended that a failure to reduce the huge award to Telex would permit it to "claim damages which are effected by its unlawful plan to appropriate IBM's business to itself." Conceding that he faced an "almost unmanageable" problem in trying to rejigger the judgment, Christensen first plaintively requested the disputants to appeal to a higher court. But by week's end he had apparently recovered some of his old self-confidence and announced that he would "promptly" reset the damages himself...
High Growth. Not surprisingly, IBM announced that it would immediately appeal for "an expedited decision" reversing Christensen's orders. The original verdict, said IBM Chairman Frank T. Cary, surpasses "any judicial precedent and contains serious errors of fact and law." Though IBM would hardly be bankrupted by the huge damage award-it amounts, when adjusted for potential tax write-offs, to about two months' profits for the corporation -Cary implied that it was far too high...
Admitting the difficulty of arriving at precise damages, Christensen found that Telex had lost $47.5 million in potential profits on equipment that the smaller firm was forced to underprice as a result of IBM's "predatory" marketing practices. He also decided that Telex was due another $70 million in possible earnings on equipment that it might have sold but for the same practices. Following standard antitrust law, the judge then trebled the $117.5 million total, to the final award of $352.5 million. The actual damages calculated by the court, Cary claimed, assume that Telex would have increased its earnings...