(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc.’s Google is pushing back on U.S. Justice Department claims that it improperly used attorney-client privilege to conceal documents in the government’s monopoly lawsuit against the company.
“None of the emails that Plaintiffs attach to their motion evidences a bad-faith scheme to hide documents,” Google said in a court filing Thursday. “Most involve Google’s contractual negotiations with business partners, a subject on which employees would appropriately need and desire legal advice from in-house counsel.”
On Monday, the Justice Department said Google employees unnecessarily copied company lawyers on emails, especially when discussing competition issues, to shield documents from discovery in litigation and government investigations. The department, which is gathering Google documents in preparation for trial, requested Google be sanctioned and forced to produce the withheld emails.
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Google said Thursday those claims were “baseless,” and that the vast majority of emails implicated had already been released. In earlier stages of the case, outside and contract attorneys spent over 21,000 hours pouring over company communications to produce documents that weren’t covered by attorney-client privilege, the company said.
The company shared several slides of internal guidance on email communications and attorney-client privilege. One slide recommends considering how a message would look on the front page of the New York Times before sending. Another warns that “there are no magic words that will always make a document privileged.”
The department’s scrutiny of Google goes back to the Trump administration. The DOJ under then-Attorney General William Barr sued Google over its search business, alleging the company used exclusive distribution deals with wireless carriers and phone makers to lock out competition.
That case was followed by a separate antitrust complaint filed by a group of state attorneys general led by Texas, which accused Google of illegally monopolizing the digital advertising market. The states said Google reached an illegal agreement with Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc., to manipulate the online auctions where advertisers and website publishers buy and sell ad space.
Google disputes that it dominates the ad tech market, arguing that the space is crowded with major companies like Amazon.com Inc., Comcast Corp. and Facebook competing for business. It also denies the states’ claim that it’s manipulating auctions to benefit Facebook.
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