{"id":796370,"date":"2026-07-31T23:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/796370\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T23:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:54:14","slug":"paramount-pitches-november-wbd-antitrust-trial-states-wga-want-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/796370\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Pitches November WBD Antitrust Trial; States & WGA Want April"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tParamount<\/a> wants a trial to start in November in the antitrust lawsuit<\/a> brought by a dozen state attorneys general and the Writers Guild America. Not surprisingly, the state AGs and the guild want an April start to the proceedings.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sides outlined their proposals ina joint filing<\/a> Friday, with the ultimate decision on scheduling left to the federal judge in the case, Araceli Martinez-Olguin.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe parties have discussed the trial schedule, but they have not reached agreement,\u201d the parties wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trial dates are hugely important for the transaction, and even Paramount\u2019s proposed date likely will cost the company hundreds of millions. After September 30, Paramount will be on the hook for about $7 million for every day that the transaction doesn\u2019t close, under an agreement with WBD<\/a> that was a sweetener to the deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Paramount spokesperson said, \u201cOur request for a November trial date is more than sufficient to give both sides the time they need to conduct discovery, gather evidence, and prepare for trial. Plaintiffs\u2019 request to delay proceedings until April is nothing more than a stonewalling tactic that goes well beyond the timelines sought in similar prior proceedings and ignores the substantial evidence plaintiffs have already received in this matter. Delay will also harm the many individuals outside this courtroom who will be denied the expanded content offerings and industry stability that a combined Paramount-WBD promises to bring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCalifornia Attorney General Rob Bonta<\/a>, who is leading 12 states in the lawsuit, said in a statement, \u201cOur challenge to the unlawful Warner Bros.\/Paramount merger is a clean-cut antitrust<\/a> challenge through\u00a0and through: it\u2019s about protecting the vibrancy of an industry, the pockets of consumers, and the quality of films and television programs that take center stage in many of our lives. This challenge deserves careful and thorough review and today my office and attorneys general across the country asked the court for a trial date next spring. We are eager to continue to make our case and look forward to a final determination of the schedule by the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week, Paramount said it would not close the merger<\/a> until June 1, 2027, or until days after the legal issues are resolved, and indicated it wanted to go directly to trial. Its announcement came just days after the judge granted the state AGs a temporary restraining order that prohibited the transaction from closing for 14 days, an order that was later extended to 28 days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company spokeswoman said a trial \u201con the merits is the best and most direct way for us to prove what we\u2019ve said from the start \u2014 this transaction is lawful, pro-competitive, and raises no antitrust concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the filing Friday, Paramount proposed a 12-day trial starting November 4 that would encompass the cases brought by the states and the WGA.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount also noted that the later date would give the judge \u201cmuch less time to decide\u201d the case by June, the outside date it had set for the merger to close, as well as time for the company to appeal.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other things, they noted that the DOJ\u2019s antitrust case seeking to block AT&T\u2019s merger with Time Warner went to trial on March 19, 2018, four months after the federal government brought the case. Makan Delrahim, who is Paramount\u2019s chief legal officer, was then the chief of the DOJ\u2019s antitrust division; on the other side was attorney Daniel Petrocelli, representing Time Warner, and now representing WBD in this case.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company also noted that Bonta had last week favored a January trial start, but now was proposing a date four months later.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGiven the stakes of this case, there is no basis and no time to delay for the sake of delay, particularly when delay significantly prejudices Defendants and the Hollywood ecosystem more broadly,\u201d Paramount\u2019s legal team wrote in the filing. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe company also argued that Paramount and the WGA will have had sufficient time for discovery.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount\u2019s legal team wrote, \u201cState Plaintiffs had six-plus months before they filed their complaint to conduct unilateral discovery regarding the proposed transaction. State Plaintiffs also had the benefit of waivers granted by Defendants to enable the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to share with State Plaintiffs all information and materials that Defendants produced to the DOJ. In sum, the discovery that State Plaintiffs received many months ago includes over two million documents from more than 80 of Defendants\u2019 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company\u2019s legal team noted that the later date would require them to refile merger materials with the Justice Department, which has already cleared the transaction<\/a>, and that it would leave the creative community in a period of uncertainty, as Paramount plans to boost production to 30 films per year.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe state AGs and WGA proposed a start of April 5, 2027, lasting at least 12-15 days, with each plaintiff presenting their cases sequentially.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe state plaintiffs wrote that extensive discovery is needed, including of \u201cthe definition of the relevant product and geographic markets, the nature and scope of harm in those markets, whether expansion by other firms will prevent harm in those markets, and whether the merger will produce verifiable, merger-specific efficiencies sufficient to outweigh harm in those markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey pointed specifically to areas like Paramount\u2019s assertion that the merger will generate billions in synergies, \u201ca claim that Plaintiff States are entitled to test in discovery, including discovery of Defendants\u2019 integration plans for their merged company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe states noted that Paramount\u2019s document productions \u201clargely cut off\u201d before the merger agreement was signed in February, leaving the plaintiffs with few internal documents about post-closing plans.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe state AGs wrote, \u201cDefendants\u2019 pre-complaint productions also do nothing to address the need for discovery from third party customers and competitors. Importantly, no depositions of percipient fact witnesses from Defendants or third parties have occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe states also contended that their schedule was \u201creasonable,\u201d claiming that the 402 days from the signing of the merger agreement on February 27 to the proposed trial date \u201cmoves this case to trial more rapidly than virtually every merger case in recent history.\u201d The AT&T-Time Warner trial started 513 days after the merger deal was signed, they noted, as opposed to when the DOJ lawsuit was filed. The state AGs also wrote that an April trial would still leave the judge with time to decide the case by June.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe state AGs also called Paramount\u2019s proposed schedule \u201cone-sided,\u201d arguing, \u201cTheir extraordinarily truncated schedule unfairly favors Defendants because they (1) have information Plaintiff States need to prove their case and (2) do not bear the burden of persuasion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount wants a trial to start in November in the antitrust lawsuit brought by a dozen state attorneys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35858,28,5109,4208,226553,93508,10343,20007],"class_list":["post-796370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-antitrust","tag-business","tag-electionline","tag-paramount","tag-paramount-wb","tag-rob-bonta","tag-warner-bros-discovery","tag-wbd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}