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A Florida federal judge on Friday threw out right-wing cable news outlet Newsmax’s antitrust lawsuit against rival Fox News on procedural grounds, calling the complaint a “shotgun pleading.”
US District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the lawsuit just two days after Newsmax filed it against the cable news giant and its parent company, Fox Corp.
Newsmax alleged in its 31-page lawsuit that the Murdoch family-controlled conglomerate held an illegal monopoly in the “right-leaning pay TV news market.”
Cannon ruled that Newsmax’s five-count lawsuit that alleged violations of federal and state antitrust laws is an “impermissible ‘shotgun pleading'” on the basis that the second through fifth counts “incorporate all preceding allegations.”
The Trump-appointed judge said in her order that the most common type of “shotgun” complaint is, by a “long shot,” a complaint containing multiple counts, “where each count adopts the allegations of all preceding counts.”
“The Court has an independent obligation to dismiss such pleadings and require repleader,” Cannon wrote.
This doesn’t mean that the legal battle between Newsmax and Fox News is over. Cannon gave Newsmax the option to re-file an amended complaint “that is consistent” with her order by next Thursday.
“The amended complaint must not contain any successive counts that incorporate all prior allegations,” Cannon wrote.
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A spokesperson for Newsmax told Business Insider in a statement on Friday, “We understand this is just a technical matter and our law firm is refiling.”
A Fox News spokesperson pointed Business Insider to a statement that the media powerhouse issued Wednesday in response to the filing of the lawsuit.
“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” that statement read.
In its lawsuit, Newsmax accused Fox Corp. and Fox News of engaging in an “exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance” in the right-wing cable news market.
Newsmax alleged that if not for Fox’s “anticompetitive behavior,” it would have “achieved greater pay TV distribution” and grown into a more “valuable” media company.
The lawsuit alleged that Fox pressures distributors into “unfair” deals that block those distributors from carrying competitors of Fox News, including Newsmax, or imposes financial penalties on distributors if they carry Newsmax or other rivals.
Earlier this year, Newsmax went public and has a market capitalization of $1.7 billion, while Fox Corp. has a market capitalization of more than $25 billion.
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