Google Fights Bid To Depose Execs In US Antitrust Case

Lawyers for Google questioned the DOJ’s and state plaintiffs’ bid to conduct new depositions of senior executives who have already spoken with government attorneys as part of their antitrust lawsuit over the tech companies’ search practices.

Google’s lawyers argued in a court filing in Washington, DC, federal court that the federal and state antitrust lawyers leading the case against the tech company had not justified their effort to open up new depositions.

The dispute marks a new flashpoint in the case, as the sides have quarreled for months over access to documents and other information. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday before US District Judge Amit Mehta.

The government said it wanted to speak again with, among others, Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president for Google search, and Philipp Schindler, chief business officer. Neither immediately responded to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The DOJ’s attorneys and lawyers for the states, including a team from the Colorado Attorney General’s office, said the new round of questioning was warranted because Google only recently turned over new documents that the company previously had said could be kept from the plaintiffs.

“Google improperly withheld thousands of documents under false claims of privilege,” DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer told the court in a new filing. “Google’s withholding of these documents was the culminating effort — following years of intentionally mislabeling documents — to hide significant information from civil discovery.”

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