Legal Research

Steve Goes to the Head of the Line [UPDATED]

On Saturday the WSJ reported (sub required) that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant back in April in Tennessee to treat the medical condition that left him emaciated.

Why not California?

“Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states. According to data provided by [the United Network for Organ Sharing], in 2006, the median number of days from joining the liver waiting list to transplant was 306 nationally. In Tennessee, it was 48 days.”

Curiously, given that this was a front page story, the Journal didn’t provide a source for their reporting. John Gruber of the Daring Fireball blog considers 3 possible avenues and concludes that it must have been a member of Apple’s board:

“The scenario I am imagining here is that Jobs does not wish to reveal anything regarding his medical situation, but that a member (or contingent) of Apple’s board believes it is in the company’s interest to release the basic gist of the story, regardless of Jobs’s wishes. This scenario would explain the timing, the certainty, and perhaps even the lack of sourcing. (Although if this scenario is the case, certainly Jobs himself must suspect the source of the leak is from the board.)”

Speaking of timing (actually TechCrunch is):

“We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that the timing of this story appears favorable for Apple. This news breaks late on a Friday, after Apple has just held a successful launch of a very high profile new product, the iPhone 3G S, that sent the stock soaring today.”

And what a successful launch it was: 750,000 new iPhones sold this past weekend.

UPDATE like 10 seconds later - No, wait, it’s more like a million iPhones sold this weeked.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on June 22, 2009 (boomark / email).