Appen Asks to Join Amended Suit vs. Google With 24 Other Owners

Counsel for Appen Media Group, the last of 25 newspaper owners to have its antitrust complaint against Google transferred to U.S. District Court for Southern New York for consolidation under Judge Kevin Castel, wrote the judge Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-09810), seeking permission to be included with the other 24 when they file their amended complaint against Google by the Dec. 2 deadline. The various newspaper owners’ lawsuits allege that Google has monopolized the digital advertising market, thereby strangling a primary source of revenue for newspapers across the country. Castel granted the owners leave Nov. 18 to file the amended complaint. When the other 24 owners filed their motion for leave to enter an amended complaint, Appen’s case was stuck in “procedural limbo” before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, said lawyer David Mitchell with Robbins Geller. Now that the Appen action has been transferred to Castel’s jurisdiction, Mitchell would represent all 25 newspaper plaintiffs in “a single pleading,” he said. Family-owned Appen owns several newspapers in Georgia, Mitchell told the judge.