Beth Wilkinson had 10 days to save Microsoft Corp.'s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., the biggest gaming deal ever.
The veteran trial lawyer had just over a week from the Federal Trade Commission's decision to seek an injunction to block the deal to implement a trial strategy and prep witnesses — including Activision Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick. Shortly after the trial started on June 22, Wilkinson used a white board to debunk an FTC witness's claim that the deal would push 20% of a rival's users to Microsoft's Xbox.
The long hours paid off. US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corleycited both Kotick's testimony and the math-based take down of the government witness in her July 11 ruling rejecting the FTC's request to block the deal.
"That's the value of trial lawyers, we think of the narrative and the story and how you weave it together," the 60-year-old Wilkinson said in an interview. "Once it was over, it was exhausting but extremely rewarding."
The 10-days of trial prep and five-day trial were the culmination of months of work on the case. Microsoft brought in Wilkinson, a name partner at Washington DC-based Wilkinson Stekloff, shortly after the deal was announced in January 2022. While the FTC first challenged the deal in December 2022, the agency didn't seek a federal court order blocking the merger until June.
"In terms of the unique preparation, I've never heard of a trial of that magnitude where you only had 10 days notice," she said, adding that her team managed to get the documents and evidence to San Francisco, get the executives ready to testify and try the case during that span.
Coming into the case "she knew nothing about video games, nothing about the industry and within a week had an undeniable grasp" of it all, Kotick said. "She is incredibly capable of distilling complex facts into an easy to understand argument."
But the Microsoft case had an unusual twist. Soon after Wilkinson was hired, her team set up consoles in her firm's DC office and paralegals played video game coaches to lawyers in the case. That was so they'd have first-hand experience on popular games like "Candy Crush," "Call of Duty" and even necromancers from the fantasy game "Diablo" that were discussed in court.
The paralegals "loved it," she said. "We would do 'teach-ins' — that's what we called them — where they would teach us and we would talk about, how it worked, how do you access the games, how do you play cross platform."
Microsoft Lawyer Beth Wilkinson's Race to Save Activision Gaming Acquisition - Bloomberg
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