Court Should Deny DOJ's Motion to Compel White Papers, Says Nexstar
The court should deny plaintiffs’ motion to compel Nexstar to produce any white papers sent to the DOJ in connection with the agency’s investigation into exchanges of pacing information or its investigation of the Sinclair/Tribune merger, said its opposition (docket…
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1:18-cv-06785) to DOJ’s discovery motion 21 Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Plaintiffs “knowingly misstate the facts,” including the parties’ longstanding agreement on the scope of discovery, it said. Plaintiffs knew before they filed their motion that Nexstar didn’t submit any white papers to the DOJ in connection with the pacing investigation, but they “egregiously omit this critical fact” in their motion to “wrongly depict Nexstar as uncooperative and as withholding relevant documents,” it said. The motion is “extremely untimely” since the deadline for filing motions to compel passed nine months ago, it said. “Plaintiffs have known for years that the discovery agreement they knowingly reached with Nexstar did not capture the documents they now seek,” Nexstar said. In an effort to resolve the dispute, Nexstar produced a letter on May 11 that Tribune submitted to DOJ in 1996 explaining why the exchange of pacing information in the Los Angeles DMA did not violate the antitrust laws, it said. The parties further agreed Nexstar “would not produce its correspondence with DOJ, the search terms used with the DOJ, and custodial documents produced in connection with the merger investigation that did not hit on agreed-upon search terms,” it said. Cox, CBS and Fox agreed last month (see 2305300073) to a $48 million settlement with advertisers in a long-running antitrust lawsuit stemming from a 2018 DOJ investigation of ad price collusion that arose during inquiries into the failed Sinclair/Tribune deal. Under the settlement, Cox, CBS and Fox will provide information and testimony that could help the advertisers as the litigation continues against broadcasters that aren’t part of the settlement, such as Nexstar, Sinclair and Gray Television. The settling defendants will provide “meaningful cooperation, which will assist Plaintiffs in the prosecution of their claims against the Non-Settling Defendants,” said local advertiser plaintiffs’ May motion for preliminary approval of settlements.