Michael Bromwich, a court appointed monitor in the Apple ebook price fixing case, says that the company is not co-operating with his investigations.
In October 2013, a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York appointed Bromwich to oversee Apple's ebook pricing activities. Bromwich's appointment came as a result of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, which says that Apple played a significant role in a scheme to fix prices for ebooks. According to the ruling, Apple was also barred from "entering into anti-competitive contracts with ebook publishers."
Bromwich now claims that he is not getting relevant assistance from Apple's legal team, executives and board members to carry on with his investigations.
"This is far less access than I have ever received during a comparable period of time in the three other monitorships I have conducted," writes Bromwich in a document filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In the document, Bromwich backs his claims along with several emails from Apple representation and executives. Bromwich also says that on multiple occasions, requested interview with the company's board members and senior executives were refused. Bromwich said that he has never waited for around a month for meetings.
Apple has granted interviews with 11 people with a combined time of 13 hours. Bromwich also questions Apple's persistence to conduct interviews at its Sunnyvale, California, office rather than the company's headquarters in Cupertino.
Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and senior vice president of legal and government affairs, described the task as calling for "voluminous historical documents." Sewell added that the company has already provided 303 pages of information requested, but Bromwich claims that the information received is an incomplete response to his request. Bromwich also complained that Apple did not provide the requested data in a timely or satisfactory manner.
Bromwich's complaint comes close on the heels of Apple accusing Bromwich, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Justice Department Inspector General, of taking advantage of the situation and charging exorbitant fees. Bromwich had proposed an hourly fee of $1,000, which the company thinks is the highest fee charged "of all known past Apple matters."
"Mr. Bromwich appears to be simply taking advantage of the fact that there is no competition here or, in his view, any ability on the part of Apple, the subject of his authority, to push back on his demands," said the lawyers for Apple in the filing.
In addition to his hourly fee, Bromwich is charging a 15 percent administrative fee and charging for the cost of hiring other lawyers to assist him, the filings stated.
Bromwich has already billed Apple over $138,000 as fees for his two weeks of work, the company alleged.
