Last year, District Judge Thomas Durkin said that AT&T and Verizon subscribers could move ahead with the case and declined to throw it out. He believed that the plaintiffs met the legal thresholds needed to sue by arguing that the higher prices they were facing were a direct result of the $26 billion T-Mobile-Sprint merger.
The proposed lawsuit represented tens to hundreds of millions of consumers. Its goal was to secure a range of penalties, including reversal of the 2020 merger.
Judge Durkin said on Wednesday that T-Mobile can appeal the decision now instead of at a later stage in the case. T-Mobile argued that AT&T and Verizon customers lack legal standing to seek billions in claimed damages. The company also said that AT&T and Verizon set their own prices and the merger cannot be held responsible for what they do.
Lawyers representing the seven Illinois and Indiana-based AT&T and Verizon subscribers had urged that a jury should hear the case before any appeal. They insisted that a long delay in the appeals court would make it harder to undo the merger.
T-Mobile‘s attorneys requested Durkin to let them appeal now “for the sake of efficiency” and said that the plaintiffs’ “expansive conception of antitrust standing is unprecedented.” They said that forcing T-Mobile to go to court before an appellate ruling on standing could waste money and judicial resources.
Back in November, T-Mobile‘s attorneys very cleverly told the court that if AT&T and Verizon customers were unhappy with the prices they were paying, they should switch to T-Mobile instead of suing the company.
