Judge Denies Google Bid to Exclude Expert Testimony in Play Store Case

U.S. District Judge James Donato for Northern California in San Francisco denied Google’s motion to exclude the testimony of the consumer plaintiffs’ expert witness, Georgetown University adjunct economics professor Hal Singer, from the Google Play Store antitrust class action, said his order Monday (docket 3:21-md-02981). Donato also granted, “in main part,” the consumers’ motion for class certification, “subject to some adjustments of the named plaintiffs,” his order said. The consumer plaintiffs allege Google illegally monopolized the Android app distribution market with anticompetitive practices in the Google Play Store. Google doesn’t suggest Singer is unqualified to be an expert witness on economics, said the order. Its main objection is over Singer’s “pass-through formula,” it said: “The formula is an essential element of his opinions about Google’s overcharges in app sales, and the artificially inflated prices consumers paid as a consequence.” But Google “has not demonstrated that unreliability or invalidity warrant exclusion” of Singer’s opinions, said Donato’s order. The plaintiffs rely heavily on Singer’s analysis “as their common method of proving antitrust impact” to consumers, and that was the class certification argument “most hotly contested by Google,” it said.