Paramount, Blue State AG hit Cory Booker over comments on antitrust lawsuit settlement

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, along with a dozen blue states, want Cory Booker to stay in his own lane when it comes to the antitrust settlement surrounding the two companies’ $111 billion mega-merger.

“The fact that a proposed consent decree does not contain all of the outcomes that a party might have desired in a multilateral negotiation does not make it fundamentally unfair,” the court-ordered response Monday said. “This is the essence of a negotiated settlement that includes compromises on behalf of all parties involved,” lawyers for Para and WBD note in the filing released just 30 minutes before the noon deadline set by U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin.

“The Executive Order reflects a reasonable compromise that addresses the competitive concerns posed by the proposed merger in the markets alleged in the complaint,” adds a 17-page document Monday from California, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Nevada, Booker’s New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington themselves, declaring their agreement “fair, reasonable, equitable and horrible.”

In a classic example of the disunity for which Democrats are infamous, the Blue Dozen (at least four of whom were very apprehensive about the regulation until the end) goes on to say: “And the executive order’s enforcement provisions have teeth. So…the executive order meets applicable standards and it must be passed.”

Intentionally ignoring anti-merger amicus briefs filed late last week by Block the Merger and the League of United Latin American Citizens, ParaBros attorneys and Democratic AGs across the country today formally responded to the September 24 letter from New Jersey’s senior senator. Following past concerns about the merger itself and Mark Ruffalo’s presence at the hearings, Booker once again took issue with David Ellison’s deal with the blue state AGs last week. Currently, with the $7 million fee paid to WBD shareholders going into effect Oct. 1 and Ellison’s disclosed threat to pull headquarters stakes out of the Golden State, the deal remains in legal limbo. That’s where it will stay, as everyone involved awaits a decision from a federal judge based in Oakland.

A state of affairs that places much of Monday’s letter from ParaBros lawyers in the flagging category.

“Twelve attorneys general, each accountable to their own electorate, have found this relief to be a fair and sufficient compromise to resolve the allegations they made in the complaint,” insists the 16-page document, echoing the notorious self-sabotage of internal Democratic Party politics.

The parties were hoping to see Judge Martinez-Olguin give the green light to the level of consent last week. However, taking the place of a long-planned virtual hearing on Paramount’s pre-settlement Hail Mary hope for a $1.88 billion bond to offset “extraordinary losses” that could result from waiting for a March 2027 trial, the Sept. 24 session was derailed — at least from the perspective of ParaBros and the litigating states, led by California Senior Assistant Paula Blizzard.

Following many long-standing critics of the merger, opposition rose and suspicion of the deal served to add fuel to an already lit fire. “The Court should weigh the proposed remedies against the relief the States initially sought: an injunction blocking the merger altogether,” Booker (D-N.J.) said in his six-page letter, requesting a number of measures, including an independent review of the settlement. “The decree does not address the root of the problem: the merger is anti-competitive and will result in the loss of jobs. »

Contacted by Deadline today, Booker had no response to Para, WBD and the AG’s response to his September 24 letter.

In their response Monday, the corporate lawyers adopted much the same tact and tone as in an initial reaction to Booker’s letter last week.

“The adequacy of the decree must therefore be evaluated against the risk of continued litigation – including the substantial prospect that the plaintiff states would have recovered nothing at all – rather than against a putative permanent injunction that the plaintiff states did not obtain,” ParaBros lawyers, from some of the nation’s largest firms, argued Monday. Accordingly, the relief obtained by the requesting States is essentially reasonable.

Yet with the ambitious Bonta, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and others stung by Democratic base blowback over their settlement efforts, it is not yet clear when Judge Martinez-Olguin, a Joe Biden appointee, will approve the degree of consent.