A coalition of groups opposed to Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger is asking a federal judge to set a briefing schedule so they can formally object to a proposed settlement as too weak.
State attorneys general announced a settlement of their antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the transaction, proposing a consent decree to address a myriad of concerns. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin has set a hearing on the decree for Thursday morning.
The groups making up the Block the Merger Coalition wrote in a legal filing that there are “serious questions” about “whether and to what extent the entry of the proposed consent decree will extinguish potential claims from citizens of the Plaintiff States concerning the merger.”
They also wrote that they have concerns that “many provisions of the proposed consent decree do not resolve the antitrust claims or introduce First Amendment problems.” Among other things, they wrote that a commitment to release at least 30 films per year “appears to allow the merging parties to together make fewer films than they made separately last year.”
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The opponents also expressed doubts about other commitments. One dictating separate carriage negotiations for cable channels “may be commercially unworkable,” and while a proposed editorial oversight board “poses free speech problems” as the court is left to oversee its implementation. They also pointed to a force majeure clause that allows Paramount to suspend the consent decree in the event of a disaster, labor disruption or a recession, The Block the Merger Coalition said that the clause may render the consent decree’s commitments “illusory.”
The Block the Merger Coalition includes the Committee for the First Amendment, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Future Film Coalition and the International Documentary Association.
They proposed a briefing schedule through October 13, past the deadline at the first of the month for Paramount to close the transaction or face paying Warner Bros. Discovery $7 million per day.
Paramount responded to the request, characterzing the proposed briefs from the opponents as “improper,” and arguing that the groups lack standing.
Paramount’s legal team wrote, “Allowing briefing at all in response to these improper requests would prejudice Paramount by delaying the closing of a transaction that has been approved by every regulator and agency that has reviewed it (including the Plaintiff States, subject to the commitments described in the Consent Decree), forcing it to incur tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars of payments while adding nothing to the record. And their proposed submissions do not offer the Court information or perspective that the existing record does not already supply.”
