What’s surprising about Electrolux’s failed $3.3 billion bid for General Electric Co.’s appliance business is not just that it collapsed midtrial, but that it went to trial at all.

Electrolux hired an all-star team of antitrust lawyers from Jones Day led by John Majoras and Joe Sims. Yet it feels as if they got caught in a game of chicken with the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, compelled to litigate a merger case that they tried to settle.