FTC Tries to Stop Meta From Buying VR Startup

designs technology around people. Facebook may have changed its name, but the Federal Trade Commission says it's still up to the same game, not designing its own technology, but buying up a smaller company with the technology it needs and eliminating any competition. Meta announced its deal to buy Within Unlimited, a virtual reality fitness app, just one day after Mark

Zuckerberg announced its name change. The FTC is suing to stop the deal, saying Meta is trying to create a monopoly in virtual reality in the same way that Facebook brought up Instagram and WhatsApp to extend its dominance in social networking. Joining me is Bloomberg Intelligence Senior litigation analyst Jennifer Ree. Why is the FTC trying to stop Meta

from buying Within? What they're trying to do, I think is not make the same mistake that they believe they made in the past when they cleared FTCs acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. They're looking at Meta as a company that's trying to sort of take over this burgeoning virtual reality space, and they see this acquisition as part of that. Within makes virtual reality apps. It has a very popular

one for fitness called Supernatural. And what the FTC claims is that if Meta didn't buy Within, they would be competing on their own because they have the resources, and they have the wherewithal and the interest in developing their own fitness app that would compete, and it would be better for them to compete than to buy Within and

go forward in virtual reality fitness that way. So the allegations here is of potential competition that if it didn't buy Within, Meta would compete with them in the future, even though it doesn't today. Has that theory of potential competition been used frequently. It hasn't been used frequently. It has been used before. Most of the cases that the FTC is relying on here are from the nineteen seventies, because the more recent limited use in court hasn't been successful.

I mean, one of the mergers that was challenged on this basis was between two companies called Steris and Synergy, and the etc failed to succeed in that challenge in court because it's very very difficult to prove, you know, you have to show that the company actually had a serious interest in entering the market and was well on its way to do so and probably would have been able to do so and been successful. So MENA has bought more than a hundred smaller companies, including nine virtual

reality apps studios, over the last three years. This is the first time the FTC has challenged a deal before it takes place. Why now, is it the timing when the FTC is on this aggressive path, or is it the deal in particular? You know, I think it's a

combination of things. It's certainly the timing, but also some of those past acquisitions may have been too small to have to be filed under the heart Scot Rodino Act, and they just may have fallen under the radar, you know, not been noticed, gone ahead, enclosed without the FTC having

a chance to take a look at them. But the FTC in particular, as I said, I think regrets some of the past acquisition activity of big tech platforms in general, and particularly Meta that have allowed them to kind of take over full spaces, and they see that Meta has this goal to move forward and to try to become dominant in virtual reality, and what they're trying to do is just nip it in the button. They see this

as one step towards that goal. You know, Meta already has through its acquisition of Oculus, the hardware that people use for virtual reality gaming and virtual reality apps, and it has a content store where it's creating some of its own virtual reality apps, and now it's trying to buy up more content. So the FTC bus this is just one more step towards Meta taking over that space,

kind of becoming the Apple of that space. You know, these are all the allegations with Apple and its app store and how it controls access to apps on iOS mobile devices, and I think what they're doing here is trying to prevent Meta from getting to that place. What is Meta's defense here? What is its response? Well, first of all, that it doesn't compete with this company, and that it's a very small company and buying you know, a small virtual reality app company in this very burgeoning

new nascent industry. You know, nobody really knows what's going to happen with it. It's really it's very beginning stages that this is a very small app and it's a small fitness app and really can't have an impact on competition. I mean, a merger has to have an anti competitive impact on competition to violate the antitrust laws. And so Meta would say, well, this just doesn't. And secondly, it would say, look, we didn't have plans to develop our own fitness SAP, even if we talked about it or

thought about it. You know, we talk about and think about a lot of things, and then we end up nixing those plans and we didn't have any plan to go forward with this, so we wouldn't have been a potential competitor, and we aren't buying this company so that we can buy up a potential competitor. Meta seems to have this growth by acquisition strategy. Is there anything wrong with that from an antitrust point of view, Well, there are two ways that there could be something wrong with that.

The first way is if you have your own products and you see this new up and coming nascent competitor and you have concerns about that company, you think it actually could really get big and th threaten your position with the product that you already have in the market. I mean, this is what the allegations are today with respect why Facebook but Instagram. So instead of trying to compete, Hey, let's do better, let's lower our prices, let's innovate more

so consumers stick with our product. Even if we face competition from this nascent entity. Let's buy it instead, because buying it just vanquished that threat, so that can be anti competitive. Then the second way could be the way the FTC leads that Meta is harming competition with the Within acquisition. It's they don't compete today and Meta doesn't necessarily view Within as a nascent competitor that threatens it

down the road. But the concept is that Meta would have enter this market and competed if it didn't buy the entity, and it's better to have two competitors than one. What will the judge be looking at here? I think that the judge will be looking at a couple of things. The first thing is if the FTC has defined what

we call a relevant antitrust market correctly. So, what the FTC has said is that a virtual reality fitness apps, dedicated fitness apps sit in their own relevant market that they don't compete against anything else other than other virtual reality fitness apps, So they don't compete, let's say, with other in home fitness potentials out there, like Peloton or Apple Fitness, you know, or any other kind of at

home guided fitness experienced that a consumer can have. So they've defined this narrow market, and the judge will be asking, well, should that market really be broader? Do consumers actually view let's say Peloton as a substitute for this virtual reality fitness Do they price constrained against each other? Is one

constraining against the other? Do they compete? So that's one issue, and I think the second issue is this whole concept of whether Meta actually would have been a potential competitor. They'll look at what metas plans, say, had the company devoted capital toward developing its own virtual reality fitness app, you know, were there approved plans to go forward with something like that that then got mixed when the company

decided to buy Within instead. I mean, the proof of that will be in their documents and what their documents say, and the judge is going to have to look at that as well. And you think it's an uphill battle for the FTC. I think it's difficult because I think

it's very speculative. Again, if the documents show that there were no plans to develop a virtual reality fitness app, or there might have been plans that were nixed, but nixed not because of the purchase of within, but for other reasons, you know, that kind of neutralizes this argument

that they would have been a potential competitor. And I think that it's really hard to say, Hey, this company was going to enter and you know what, if they had, they would have been a vibrant competitor within very popular fitness app. I think that's difficult to prove in court. And I also think there could be some problems with the defined relevant market here um limiting it to just these virtual reality fitness apps. Is this a test case for the FTC for its more aggressive strategy on mergers,

especially by the Silicon Valley giants. I think it can be thought of that way, absolutely, not just the test case to try to expand the boundaries of antitrust law and try to push some of these novel theories and have some success in court with novel theories that might open the way, open the road in the future to more easily challenge other deals. And I think it's also part of trying to prevent big tech platforms from continually

growing through acquisition. You know, there's nothing on with growing organically, but just trying to prevent this growth that's happened over the last ten years through acquisition. So it's sort of twofold. Meta has said that if the judge rules against them, it will abandon the deal. If the judge rules against the FTC might have taken appeal, absolutely it could. So what happens there is if the judge rules against the FTC, technically the companies are free to go ahead and close

their deal and integrate. What the FTC would do if they chose to appeal, if they'd likely seek an emergency order from the court to prevent the companies from closing just pending that appeal, and sometimes they win those. More recently in the last couple of years, they haven't been winning those orders, and then it makes more difficult for them to go through with the appeal because the companies at that point would probably go ahead and close and integrate.

And now it's more difficult even if they wanted court to get a judge to require the companies to unwind the deal. Is the FTC still trying to unwind the Instagram and What'sapp purchase? Yes, there's still that litigation is

still ongoing. I believe it is set to go to trial next year, either unwind or get some other kind of injunctive remedy like required interoperability or something like that that's short of unwinding the deals, but does require Facebook to allow for you know, better interoperability with other rivals and allowing users to migrate their history and their content to other platforms. So the FTC is very busy with

Silicon values platforms. The Commission has voted to block Microsoft's sixty nine billion dollar acquisition of Activision, which is I was surprised at this one of the thirty biggest acquisitions of all time. What's the reason they're so that's a little bit different than the challenge to Meta and within this deal is called a vertical theory deal. So what they're objecting to here is the vertical integration between Microsoft

and Activision. So in other words, Microsoft has consoles and PCs on which people can play mobile games, and Activision creates that mobile content. So there are at different levels of distribution for an entire industry of mobile game playing. And what the FTC is saying is, look, once Microsoft controls this activision content, it's going to have an increased incentive and the ability to withhold or degrade that content,

and weighs that less in competition. In other words, that hurt its competitors, primarily it's competitors and consoles, which is really mostly just Sony. Sony, which is a competitor for Microsoft, is objecting because it's concerned that Microsoft could make games like Call of Duty exclusive. And apparently Microsoft has something of a history here. Well, you know, yes and no. I'll start by saying it has actually been fairly typical

for console companies to have exclusive games. Sony itself, which has the PlayStation console, has games that are exclusive to PlayStation. It does that, and Microsoft has some exclusive games as well. So Microsoft a couple of years ago acquired Zenemax, and when they did, they were cleared by the European Commission which took a look at the deal, and the European Commission cleared it without any commitments. So Microsoft didn't make any commitments to the Commission that it would not make

certain games exclusive. Now, we did tell the Commission, we don't have an incentive to take these games as exclusives, but it later did do so. And this is what the FTC has mentioned in its complaints, saying that, well, even if Microsoft says we have no incentive to go exclusive with these games, hey, that's what it said that the European Commission when it acquired Dnomax. But it went ahead and did that. But the European Commission is actually saying,

you know, it's not exactly right. You know, we cleared it because we actually just didn't think the deal was problematic, and even if they took the games exclusive, we didn't think that was problematic or could harm competition. So it really wasn't an issue, and we weren't telling them you shouldn't or can't take these games exclusive. And it only took some of the Zenmax games exclusive, not all of them.

So you know, it's maybe lightly disingenuous to rely on that conduct and compare that conduct to what might happen here, particularly because Microsoft has been very open about the fact that it's willing to extend a ten year license to Sony for the Call of Duty games. Now, I think it might have to do a little bit better than that. It might have to include other activision games within that

license and not just Call of Duty. But it's been fairly open about willing to enter into a legally binding contract, you know, a license to you know, not foreclosed Sony and to provide Call of Duty to Sony for PlayStation players to go ahead and play. So I think that again, this deal might be a little bit difficult also in court for the FTC, because you know, you have that promise out there by Microsoft which is more than just work. You know, it would be legally binding if it entered

a license. Clarify, what is Microsoft's defense, Well, I mean it is saying that it doesn't have the incentive or

the ability to take these games exclusive. And and the reasoning behind this, the theory, let's behind this that the FDC would have to prove in court is that Microsoft would take these games exclusive or particularly Call of Duty, and by doing so, it would not get the licensing fees, the licensing that would have been paid to it, you know, the revenue it would have achieved from licensing fees from

other companies because it's now taken the game exclusive. But that ultimately it will be more profitable from Microsoft to forgo those fees because down the road, it would drive more consumers to its console, It's Xbox over the PlayStation, and it would recoup revenues by selling the Xbox to consumers. And Microsoft saying no, that's just not really the case, that the math doesn't work out that way for us.

It's actually more profitable for us to make these games widely available, to collect these licensing fees, and to continue to sell our console, which I believe they sell at a very low margin. So the proof is going to be in the math. I mean, there will be complicated analytics that are presented to the judge by economic experts on both sides showing whether or not a strategy like that would be profitable to Microsoft down the road or wouldn't.

And that's really very difficult to show, June Um. This is very similar to what the Department of Justice tried to do when it suits to block a T and T from acquiring Time Warner. Very similar concept and and similar analytics. And you know, you had to go in there and prove that this kind of strategy would be

profitable for the company, and it just didn't work. You know, the model that the economists presented had a lot of problems with it, had a lot of weaknesses in it that the judge pointed out, and he had some issues with it, and he just simply didn't feel that they proved that it would have been profitable for the companies

to engage in that kind of strategy. And so there could be the same kind of challenge here, and Microsoft, of course will have their own experts showing how it's not profitable and wouldn't make sense for Microsoft to take these games exclusive. This is an in house trial with an administrative law judge. Oftentimes defended say that in those cases the in house law judge, the administrative law judge, favors the agency. So I have a couple of theories

about this. I think, first of all, there has been a pattern if you look at the last ten fifteen years of the FDC winning those few we call it apart three when you go through these proceedings internally, very few actually go through to the finish. But for the few that have gone through the finish, we have seen

that the FTC is a good track record. But I tend to think that that could be because at least in the past until this administration, the FTC would bring cases that were easier to win, that they had better evidence on their side, They had stronger, more traditional antitrust theories, so it was more likely they were going to win. This judge, in fact, has recently ruled against the FTC in two recent Part three proceedings. One was the merger of Alumina and Grail that challenge and the other one

was a challenge to all Trea's investment in Jewel. These were both in the last couple years. Same administrative law judge that would oversee this hearing, and he ruled against the FTC. I tend to believe he actually is quite independent and doesn't really essentially favor the FTC going in now. I'm a little confused about the timing because the trial is set for August two, but the deal is set

to close by June. That's a problem for the company. Yeah, So the timing is very complicated here because right now the companies cannot close because there are anti trust investigations that are still outstanding in the UK and in Europe before the European Commission, and those reviews keep the companies from being able to close their deal. Now both of those right now have decision dates in the first quarter, one of them in March and one of them in

April if they clear. If the both the UK and Europe clear Microsoft in activision to close their deal, technically they can even though this Part three procedure is pending. So what will have to happen is the FTC, in communication with Europe and with the UK, will know if that's coming, and they'll have to actually sue the companies for a preliminary injunction in federal court in the United States to get a temporary block not permanent, but just

a temporary block on the closing pending their Part three. Otherwise, even though the Part three is ongoing, the companies would still be able to close. So I think that that's what they will do if those approvals are forthcoming. So we might see a filing in federal court sometime in February or maybe in March by the FTC, and that process will finish up if it happens more quickly than

the Part three. Now, if there aren't approvals in the UK and Europe and Microsoft has to fight those as well, they're either going to have to abandon the deal or the companies are going to have to agree to extend that ending. What's FTC Chair Lena Kahn's records so far, Yeah, you know, it's a little bit mixed. Yeah. She she was really kind of hobbled for quite a long time when she first took on the chairpersonship because it was a split FTC. There were two Republican commissioners and two

Democratic commissioners. One of them was Lena Khan. You know, there was some trouble because there were some split vote two to two and when the commission ties they can't take action, it would mean no lawsuit against the deal, and and that kind of stopped her for a while. But once the final commissioner was appointed and confirmed that was al Vero Badoya, she's been able to do a

little bit more. And I say it's mixed because she's been able to get some abandonments of deals with which the FTC would look at as a success when they sue and instead of having to go through litigation and when in court, the companies too, you know, just to walk away. So they did manage that with Lockheed Arrow Jet, and they also managed that within Video Arm and there were several hospital deal three of them in fact, in two thousand and twenty two that all abandoned their deal.

And and those are successes, even though it's not necessarily a court success. But there were the two losses in their own internal court. I just mentioned the Illuminate Grail and the Ultria Jewel losses. So those weren't great. And now we'll see what happens. You've got to outstanding right now with Microsoft Activision and with Meta Within. And it's unclear whether Microsoft Activision will get all the way to

a court decision, but clearly Meta Within will that. We expect the decision in that one in December, So we'll see what happens there because that'll show us at the beginning of her record and actually in federal court. Thanks so much, Jan, that's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior litigation analyst Jennifer Ree. A New York law temporarily lifts the statute of limitations on civil sexual abuse and harassment claims and is expected

to lead to a flood of lawsuits. In fact, lawsuits have already been filed against former President Donald Trump, comedian Bill Cosby, and billionaire Leon Black over allegations they assaulted women decades ago. Which their lawyers deny joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson tell us more about this law. So the law called the New York Adult Survivor's apt It was signed into law in May and it took

effect last month on Thanksgiving Day. And what it does is it lists temporarily for one year, lists the statute of limitations on civil claims over sexual offenses like sexual abuse and harassments. So it's a fairly new type of law. It just took effects. So what we're expecting is that is quite a few lawsuits to be filed in the next year. Was this in response to the me too movement?

It was definitely related to that. In two thousand nineteen, the New York State legislature actually changed to the statute of limitations for sexual offenses from one year to twenty years, so really acknowledging that, you know, there's a unique circumstances here where victims they're not necessarily able to process what has happened and seek the help that they need that quickly,

just because of the nature of the ascent. And so this change acknowledged that gave victims twenty years of statutes of limitations to file claims, but it wasn't retroactive. So if you look back at the decade of alleged abuse out there, there was still no way to do UM over that conduct. So what they did was passed this law to sort of fill in that gap and say, Okay, you've got a year to file these civil claims now.

And it's also should be noted that it's similar law was passed for child's victims of abuse, that that window already had passed. That law was passed earlier and it was seen as very successful. So now this new law is to allow adults, and I actually mentioned that it's victims who were adults at the time that they were abused. That's what this law is geared toward, and that's what it's just taken affect. Are there any challenges expected to

this law? You can expect there will definitely be challenged to these lawsuits and they're going to be very strongly defended, you know, both with lawyers on both sides here. I spoke with played this lawyers who are out there looking

for clients or who have already filed these lawsuits. And I spoke with lawyers who are representing companies UM that are looking into this who expects that they might be sued or have been sued already, And so there are plenty of defenses that are going to be deployed here very strongly. But when it came to the law actually being debated, there wasn't quite the outpouring of lobbying against the law publicly. You know, I spoke with some people

involved in the passage of the laws. They really couldn't say who is publicly coming out against it. When that Child Victims Act passed, By comparison, there were groups coming out publicly against it related to the Catholic Church and Boy Scout to America and organizations that were worried about getting hit with lots of lawsuits. They've lobbied against it. But there wasn't that same lobbying against this law publicly.

But what you can expect to see is that these individual lawsuits will be challenged in court and also out of court before they're filed. But I think there will be a lot of settlements that are reached that we

never hear about. What big names have already been sued. Well, Former President Donald Trump was one of the first people to be sued under this law, eating Carol and New York writer who had previously accused Trump of raping her over two decades ago, and then in two thousand nineteen sued him for defamation when he denied it and said she was lying. She would have had filed a claim the first day of this lawsop effect, she sued Trump for battery. You know, five women have come forward and

sued Bill Cosby last week. You know, victims who had already accused him of wrongdoing previously, but now sued under this law, now that it has taken an effect, billing Leon Black, He was also sued over allegedly assaulting women decades ago. All of these men have denied these allegations when the lawyers said that they planned to fight these cases. So clearly there's all already some high profile lawsuits being filed. Canna plaintive sue a company to hold them accountable for

alleged abuse, even if the alleged abuser is deceased. Yes, in fact, that has already happened. In the case of Atlantic Records, part of Warner Music group. Warner Music is being sued because the Atlantic Records founder allegedly decades ago, more than forty years ago, sexually abused women. So now the company and you know, saying that they're looking into these allegations, interviewing people who may have been around back then, saying that many of the individuals who would have been

witnessing are deceased or in their eighties or nineties. So clearly that this case against the Warner Music Group is a good illustration of how difficult it might be for

some of these defendants to defend themselves. Notably the suit against Bill Cosby, you know, it also named NBC Universal Media as a defendant because it aired the Cosby Show in a Different World, you know, to which was a the starting that allegedly, uh he used these shows in his popularity around these shows to lure women onto the sets of the shows in his circles and then abuse them, you know, allegedly drugging and raping them in some cases.

So NBC Universal is accused of essentially turning a blind eye to cause these conducts for years, a similar claim made against Warner Music Groups. Of course, both companies are expected to fit those very strongly in court. This law, you know, the the effect it seems like fundamental unfairness

to the companies. How do you defend against a suit when the person accused is dead, I mean, you're you're You're definitely going to hear arguments like this in court, and I'm personally very curious to see how these arguments are made because it is very unusual set of circumstances here. That is a pretty unique law. So any companies even now can be accused of turning a blind eye to conduct that end sued for negligence. So the civil fact is that this law has a raised the statute of limitations.

So even if you know the allegation, since they're very old, anyone can can bring these claims in court. But that doesn't mean that they're automatically going to win, right, So if you have a victim coming in and they're only evidence is essentially their testimony and their statement of what happens, it may seem like it's unfair to the company that has been too but it also may make it fairly easy for that company to win the case and just say I'm sorry, but you don't have any evidence here.

But I think what we'll see is a lot of these cases do have some additional evidence where you might have witnesses who have victims confided in at the time, who could testify about what they were told at the time, could have a document um internal corporate documents or employment records that placed the plaintiffs and they accused of user in the same place at the same time. And you may also be able to show a pattern of conduct

by interviewing other victims. So there's a lot of different ways that the planets are going to make their case here. But as you say that, some of these claims are going to be very old, and it doesn't automatically mean the jury is going to accept them. As you said, you talked to a lot of lawyers, and one told you that plaintiff lawyers best chance is before they even

file the suit. That's right. That's why I see as the lawyers I suppose to said that what we end up seeing in court, actual lawsuits that are filed are really just going to be the tip of the iceberg, and that a lot of these claims are and are going to be resolved before anything becomes public, and that as these plaintiff lawyers know, you know, some of these claims may be so serious that a company will simply want to settle them just to keep them from becoming

public that they can use that as part of their settlement strategy. So I'm not sure if that increases the amount of money that they get paid or whatnot. I'm sure that every settlement is going to be handled a little bit differently, but clearly the reputational damage is potentially significant for some of these employers, as you can imagine. Are there any estimates of how many lawsuits might be filed?

You know, nobody really knows for sure, and because so many of the claims could be out of court, we might not hear about. But one lawyer at least pointed to the child victims ask that I mentioned earlier and said that in their estimation, there has been tens of thousands of lawsuits resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and damages awards. So you could easily see

something like that happening here. I mean, as we know this conduct is real, and you can't say in specific case whether it's real or not because we haven't seen them all yet, but we do know that this conduct did occur, and we do know I think it's pretty well established that a lot of employers and industries did turn a blind eye to the conduct for a long time, which is exactly why the these two movements was such

a watershed moment. So it is more likely now, as some of these lawyers said, that juries are going to take these claims more seriously, just because people seem to be looking at these allegations in a different way now. So that's another potential benefit here for plainest lawyers. And I should also point out that yes, their lawyers and and they do stand to make quite a bit of money from these claims, but they also some of these lawyers, they've been working on these types of cases for years,

since long before this law was around. So this is also something that a lot of some of these lawyers really deeply believe in and have a sense of justice around. So that's another element to it too. There's a very human element to this, and it it isn't just all about the money. You spoke to a former prosecute who

said that Wall Street employers are especially at risk. Yeah, you know, and I wasn't too surprised to hear that, because as all the lawyers point out, and as you noted, there is a lot of money involved here, and not all of these claims are going to be taken on by plainest lawyers simply because there may not be a big enough financial payout at the end to make it

worth anyone's time and energy. So when you're looking at companies with the deep pockets that are based in New York, you know, financial institutions just to do come to mind. And uh, you know, we know from past litigation and testimonials that this kind of conduct was rampant in the industry for a long time. And we're talking about something that might have happened to a woman in you know, the eighties or early nineties, something that you know, all

of that sort of ancient history. But then they now have a chance to bring it up here in a lawsuit, and they might and they might see it as a way to get some financial conversation to make up for whatever was that allegedly happened. So the word deep pockets did come up a lot in these interviews, and I think that they do spect to see lawsuits against Wall Street fans speak of deep pockets. I understand suits have

already been filed against the New York prison system. Yeah, you know, that was a really interesting element to its

whole issue here. When I spoke with a lawyer who noted that she had already received hundreds of inquiries from clients that you know that she and she was taking their cases and had already filed ten suits by the time I talked to her, But so that she already she had hundreds more kind And the reason that the New York prison system or or any prison system is so unique of courses you have, for example, you know, these women's prisons where according to this lawyer, there's been

a long history of sexual abuse and rape in the prison system, involving the correctional officers and other you know, employees at the prison who have this complete control over this female population. So according to this lawyer, um, when it's similar law like this pass in California recently, it didn't totally lift the statute of limitations, that it only

went back to two thousand nine temporarily. But even in that case, she said that she had foilved hundreds you know, there were hundreds of claimants for involving the prison systems, and so she's expecting that here in New York. And you know, she told me some of the stories and they were they were pretty awful, some of them, and

some of the alleged conducts that occurred. So I think that's something that will probably see some big lawsuits and some big potential damage awards, maybe a trial come out of that. And you mentioned a gene Carol. Her case has been going on it seems like forever. So now she suited under this law. But tell us what's happening with the rest of her case. I mean part of

it is now in d C. Yeah, that's right. This law really, you know, I guess the simple way of looking at it is this, if she loses her defamation case for whatever reason, if it gets dismissed, she will still have this case now to go forward on because her new lawsuit alleged battery. So the specific facts are around the alleged rate, whereas the earlier case that we've been talking about for so long is the defamation suit

related to the best same alleged rates. So you know, right now next month in the DC Court of Appeals is going to hear arguments. The DC local courts or highest appeals court is going to determine whether or not Donald Trump's alleged defamation the words that he said about eating Carroll back and she dousand nineteen qualified as an employment do Essentially, it's come down to a matter of

DC employment law. So if Eging Carroll prevails improved that his comments about her did not qualify as an official duty, then the case will get kicked back to federal court in New York where it's been for a while, and it will go to trial in April. And despite this litigation over the litigation, Donald Trump did give a deposition in that case. He did, He did fit for a deposition and according to his lawyer, answered all the questions of her asked of him. As she put it, he

set the record straight. You know, a lot of people were deposed in that case, including Eging Carroll, and so we don't know what exactly was asked or said in those but that's potentially some of those details could come out at trial. Thanks so much, Eric. That's Eric Lawson, Bloomberg Legal Reporter, and that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the

latest legal news honor Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, Slash podcast Slash Law, and remember to tune into the Bloomberg Law Show every week night at ten BM Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg