Surprising no one except for the timing, Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice has weighed in on the $1.88 billion bond battle between David Ellison‘s Paramount and a dozen blue states over the $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery.
Disputing the very right of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, New York’s Letitia James and others from raising an antitrust stink, the now Todd Blanche run DOJ made its bottom line POV a top line in paperwork filed Tuesday in federal court. “The bond requirement forces parties to have skin in the game, and also provides a measure of protection to defendants who were ultimately found to be wrongly enjoined,” the DOJ asserts, quoting from past Clayton Act cases.
Citing “extraordinary losses” out of the time to the March 2027 scheduled trial in the AGs and WGA’s action, plus the $7 million a day ticking fee in the WBD contract that kicks in on October 1 (the same day Paramount has threaten to take its corporate HQ to redder pastures), the still Melrose lot based company wants the plaintiffs to pony up.
Besides being a tried and true tactic of distraction, you get why the son of one of the richest men in the world wants the nearly $2 billion. Add up that ticking fee equalling more that $635 million a quarter for Para, and the at least two quarters before the trial and the serious money is on the table — even for an Ellison.
“Congress provided for complementary antitrust enforcement by the federal government and private parties—but made clear that it was not a system of equals,” says the 17-page Statement of Interest of the USA to Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín. Drilling down to Section 16 of the antitrust Clayton Act, the feds argue “the plain meaning of the statute and the contemporaneous use of ‘proper bond’ in dictionaries and federal court decisions makes it clear the amount of the bond must be fit, suitable, adapted, and correct to compensate the defendant for ‘damages for an injunction improvidently granted.’”
AKA: Give our “good friend” David the money. Whether or not bond weary Judge Martínez-Olguín agrees we may discover next week when the parties meet in Oakland. Today Bonta’s office did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the feds’ passive aggressive escalation of the matter.
They might be busy, and we ain’t talking about the CA AGs easy path to reelection in November.
With court orchestrated settlement talks now on again for the end of October, it’s going to be a stringent few months heading towards the March 2, 2027 starting trial. There’s September 24 hearing on the bond debate, which the AGs and the WGA have dismissed as more posturing by Para, there’s that pricey ticking fee kick-off and a possible SCOTUS intervention in the whole thing.
Rob Bonta and Letitia James
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