In United States telecommunication law, the Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) is the August 1982 consent decree concerning the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its subsidiaries, in the antitrust lawsuit United States v. AT&T of 1974.
The terms required the breakup of the Bell System, including removing local telephone service from AT&T control and placing business restrictions on the divested local telephone companies in exchange for removing other longstanding restrictions on what businesses AT&T could own and manage.
[1]: 125 The decree replaced the entirety of the previous final judgment of January 24, 1956 in the case United States v. Western Electric Inc.,[2][3] which had been transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and is referred to in the MFJ as the Western Electric case,[4]: 143 (also footnote 4) and consolidated with the existing United States v. AT&T filed on November 20, 1974, which is referred to in the MFJ as the AT&T action[4]: 139 or AT&T case.
The decree was made with Harold H. Greene as presiding judge.
[4] This article incorporates public domain material from Federal Standard 1037C.