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 just isn’t 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 mentioned 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 “dangerous habits.”

Apple and Epic have been submitting joint standing studies 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 info would have been obvious to Apple weeks in the past,” Hixson mentioned within the order. “It’s merely not plausible that Apple realized of this info solely within the two weeks following the final standing report.” The choose mentioned the request raises different considerations, calling into query the standard of Apple’s studies and its intentions round complying in a well timed method. Apple has “almost infinite assets” that it may have tapped to get the duty carried out within the allotted time, in response to Hixson.

“This can be a basic ethical hazard,” Hixson mentioned within the order, “and the best way Apple introduced out of the blue 4 days earlier than the substantial completion deadline that it will not make that deadline due to a doc rely that it had absolutely been conscious of for weeks hardly creates the impression that Apple is behaving responsibly.”