United States v. AT&T / Modification of Final Judgment (1982)

The antitrust settlement dismantling the Bell System — AT&T's divestment of its local operating companies, paired with a modification of the 1956 consent decree — agreed and announced January 8, 1982, the same day Assistant Attorney General William Baxter is popularly said to have dismissed United States v. IBM. The vault's 2026-07-24 research sharpened a distinction the popular retelling collapses: per the Federal Judicial Center, the AT&T case itself was not judicially dismissed until August 24, 1982 — seven months after the January announcement, following Judge Harold Greene's review — and the local-company divestiture was not implemented until January 1, 1984. "Finalized" the AT&T breakup is doing different work depending on which of these three dates it means.

References

• claim-baxter-dismissed-ibm-case-same-day-att-breakup-finalized
• claim-att-case-dismissed-august-1982-not-january-complicates-same-day-narrative
• Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-baxter-ibm-att-same-day.md, 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-24-did-baxter-dismiss-us-v-ibm-the-same.md