N.Y. Judge Grants Nexstar’s Dismissal of DirecTV’s Antitrust Complaint

U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for Southern New York in Manhattan granted the motion of Nexstar Media Group and two sidecar companies, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting, to dismiss DirecTV’s antitrust complaint for lack of standing, said the judge’s signed opinion and order Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-02221).

The judge also denied DirecTV’s motion for oral argument on the motion to dismiss (see 2306270051). DirecTV’s year-old complaint alleged that Nexstar, Mission and White Knight colluded to set retransmission consent agreement (RCA) fee prices (see 2303150041).

The judge concluded that the complaint adequately alleged DirecTV’s Article III standing but didn't “plausibly allege standing under the antitrust laws,” said his opinion and order. DirecTV didn’t enter into an RCA with Mission or White Knight, which would have required it to pay what it alleges to be supracompetitive fees, it said.

Because the RCAs weren’t renewed, DirecTV customers experienced blackouts that led them to cancel or not renew their services, causing DirecTV to suffer a profit loss, said the opinion and order. But DirecTV can’t allege that the injury “is of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent” and that it flows from the anticompetitive nature of the defendants’ conduct, it said.

On the facts alleged, the judge concluded that DirecTV lacked antitrust standing “because it would not be an efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws,” said the opinion and order. The judge also declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over DirecTV’s remaining state law claims and dismissed them without prejudice, it said.

The judge found that DirecTV’s injuries “are too indirect and speculative to confer antitrust standing,” said his opinion and order. Its theory was speculative because it relied on two "critical assumptions,” it said. One was that absent the defendants’ collusive demands, the parties would have reached an agreement, it said. The other was that had the parties agreed, subscribers wouldn’t have left DirecTV, it said.

But there’s no way of knowing “whether, and on what terms, the parties would have agreed,” and whether because of such an agreement, subscribers would have stayed with DirecTV, said the opinion and order. DirecTV’s injury is indirect, because DirecTV didn’t pay higher prices, but claims to have suffered by losing customers due to the blackouts, it said.

In sum, DirecTV hasn’t adequately alleged antitrust standing, said the opinion and order. Assuming that it was harmed by its failure to reach an agreement with the defendants, because it never paid supracompetitive rates, this harm didn’t flow from that which made the defendants’ conduct illegal, it said. It’s thus not the “special kind” of antitrust injury that confers standing on a private plaintiff to sue under the antitrust laws, it said.