*United States v. AT&T* was not judicially dismissed until August 24, 1982 — seven months after the January 1982 settlement Baxter is said to have 'finalized' the same day as the IBM dismissal

The popular account of January 8, 1982 — the day Assistant Attorney General William Baxter is said to have simultaneously "finalized the AT&T breakup" and dismissed United States v. IBM — describes the day AT&T's divestiture settlement was agreed and announced, not the day the AT&T case itself was judicially closed. Per the Federal Judicial Center's own history of the Bell System breakup, "United States v. AT&T was dismissed on August 24, 1982, and the divestment of AT&T's local operating companies was implemented on January 1, 1984" — a gap of over seven months between the announcement and the case's actual court disposition, during which Judge Harold Greene's review process incorporated modifications to the settlement terms.

This matters because it splits "finalized" into two different events that the popular retelling treats as one. If "finalized" means the day the settlement was signed and announced, that day (January 8, 1982) is the same day widely reported for the IBM dismissal — see claim-baxter-dismissed-ibm-case-same-day-att-breakup-finalized. But if it means the day the case was itself dismissed — the same procedural category of event as the IBM dismissal, and arguably the more natural reading of "finalized" — the two events are seven and a half months apart, and the coincidence dissolves. Neither this note nor the sibling same-day claim resolves which sense of "finalized" the original tellers intended; they simply were not distinguishing the two.

Sourcing floor check: a specific date is a quantitative claim requiring Tier 1-2 sourcing per 00-meta/specs/sources.md; the Federal Judicial Center is an institutional, high-method government source and clears that floor on its own. No [unverified-*] flag is required for the August 24 date itself, though it currently rests on a single source.