Deny 'in Full' Nexstar’s Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Claims, Urges DirecTV

The June 26 motion of Nexstar and sidecar companies Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting to dismiss DirecTV’s retransmission consent antitrust complaint (see 2306270051) “reads as if it were a motion for summary judgment on a full factual record,” said DirecTV’s memorandum of law in opposition Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-02221) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. In an attempt to escape the complaint’s 225 paragraphs “of well-pleaded evidentiary facts supporting a plausible inference of a conspiracy,” the defendants rely on what they call “facts” that are alleged “nowhere” in the complaint, said DirecTV. They repeatedly assert, for example, that their “supracompetitive price demands” were caused by rising content costs “rather than conspiracy,” it said. They likewise ask the court to reject, rather than accept as true, “many of the facts that are alleged in the complaint,” it said. That includes “direct evidence” confirming that Nexstar, the conspiracy’s “puppet master,” received highly confidential rate information from its sidecars, it said. The defendants’ failure to abide by the “strictures” of Rule 12(b) is underscored by their failure to acknowledge even once in their 50-page brief “the controlling legal precedent for pleading an antitrust conspiracy at this stage of litigation,” said DirecTV. They “fare no better” with their attempts to have the court dismiss DirecTV’s state law claims for breach of contract and tortious interference, it said. Those “likewise turn on highly factual arguments” and a “misreading” of the complaint’s allegations, it said. Their factual arguments “will simply have to await another day,” it said. “Their motion to dismiss should be denied in full.”