“how is it that Judge Denise Cote can assess a $450,000,000 fine “
I saw no criminal conviction or fine ...
Then Apple needn't pay anything. There are no "damages" here. This is a fine being distributed. That is the ONLY penalty that can be adjudicated other than jail time, which long ago was dropped. You are dancing around trying to continue your argument about the "letter" of the law, ignoring CASE law. There were no "plaintiffs" asserting they were damaged by a tort. It was a case brought by the GOVERNMENT claiming a violation of the law had been committed.
You have ONE article you link to from LAW360 which claims that some "antitrust" lawyers claim that the US Supreme Court did not intend to "blow up" 100 years of jurisprudence with Leegin but that is exactly what they said in their written opinion and the REASON for making the dichotomy between vertical and horizontal involvement. That is what SUPREME COURT DECISIONS DO. That's why they get paid to make the decisions. If it was so easy, there would be NEED for the US Supreme Court to even be involved! Just apply the 100 years of jurisprudence, rotate the cogs of justice, and out comes the decision. If it were that simple, cases such as Leegin would NEVER reach the Supreme Court to make a new determination of WHY there was a question to be decided. The reason was that there WAS a difference between a vertical involvement and a horizontal conspiracy and the US Supreme Court MADE THAT DETERMINATION, and then went on to TELL the lower courts how to make that determination. They spelled it out. . . and explicitly explained WHY. There was no lack of context as Spencer Weber Waller claims. Done.
i've read papers criticizing Waller's conclusions as well. . . from law professors who sided strongly with Jacobs.
Judge Jacobs did not just rely on Leegin but also cited several other US Supreme Court decisions with the SAME distinctions from the 2000s. You have NOT read the other opinions of the other two judges at all. They both ignored the explicit instructions of the US Supreme Court and those words were NOT taken out of context but were quite explicit. I went and read Leegin. What you have is the difference between LIBERAL lawyers, who prefer the old per se rules of slash and burn every body just has to be guilty, no matter what, as a LIBERAL antibusiness, anti-trust attorney who makes his money seeing antitrust violations everywhere he looks, and the Conservative Jacobs who prefers the Rule of Reason as written by Justice Scalia.
Now, I am not going to waste anymore time discussing this with you. You show no understanding of this at all. . . you do not even understand what TYPE of case this is.