Judge rejects Apple’s last-minute request for a deadline extension in Epic case

Apple tried on the final second to get out of manufacturing a trove of paperwork by Monday because it was ordered to in its ongoing dispute with Epic, and Justice of the Peace Decide Thomas Hixson shouldn’t be having it. In early August, the corporate was given a deadline of September 30 to supply paperwork referring to the this yr, which was its try and fulfill an injunction. Apple initially advised the courtroom that the duty would entail reviewing roughly 650,000 paperwork — however in a standing report on Thursday, it stated the quantity had ballooned to over 1.3 million, and requested for a two-week extension. Hixson denied the request on Friday in a strongly worded noticed by , and known as out Apple’s transfer as “unhealthy habits.”

Apple and Epic have been submitting joint standing reviews to the courtroom each two weeks, and the problem of Apple’s paperwork exceeding its earlier estimate by no means beforehand got here up, the choose famous. “This data would have been obvious to Apple weeks in the past,” Hixson stated within the order. “It’s merely not plausible that Apple discovered of this data solely within the two weeks following the final standing report.” The choose stated the request raises different considerations, calling into query the standard of Apple’s reviews and its intentions round complying in a well timed method. Apple has “practically infinite sources” that it might have tapped to get the duty achieved within the allotted time, in accordance with Hixson.

“It is a basic ethical hazard,” Hixson stated within the order, “and the way in which Apple introduced out of the blue 4 days earlier than the substantial completion deadline that it could not make that deadline due to a doc depend that it had certainly been conscious of for weeks hardly creates the impression that Apple is behaving responsibly.”