Attorneys for Dish Network came out swinging in the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday (9/23), as the direct broadcast satellite service provider asked the federal judicial body to impose monetary sanctions on Soohyung Kim and his SGCI Holdings III LLC along with their counsel.
In short, Dish, represented by Elyse Echtman at Steptoe LLP, calls Kim’s lawsuit against the FCC for alleged civil rights violations — a legal action that saw Dish and its leader, Charlie Ergen, called as non-government defendants — “nothing more than an expensive temper tantrum thrown by an entitled entrepreneur who is irate over the fact that the FCC did not give him exactly what he wanted exactly when he wanted it.”
Kim and Standard General on April 24 filed a $136 million lawsuit in the D.C. federal district court, a move that came after the Commission’s Media Bureau, led by Holly Saurer, sent Standard General’s proposed merger acquisition with TEGNA to an Administrative Law Judge. This would have led to a potentially lengthy review — something neither TEGNA nor Standard General could tolerate, given the projected closing date of the deal. Rather than have the ALJ, Jane Hinckley Halprin, adjudicate, TEGNA and Kim’s group moved ahead with a deal unwind.
Then came SCGI Holdings III LLC v FCC, in which Dish and Ergen were called as non-government defendants along with Allen Media Group, the television industry entity led by Byron Allen; Goodfriend Group Inc. and its David Goodfriend; NewsGuild-CWA; NABET-CWA; United Church of Christ; and Common Cause.
Why were those non-government entities included in Soo’s lawsuit? Each were key deal detractors who spoke out against the transaction in front of the Commission.
Called as government defendants were Saurer and FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
While there are several factors that ultimately led to the FCC’s decision to designate the deal for a hearing in front of an Administrative Law Judge, Kim maintains the key reason it failed to win Commission approval comes down to one thing: racial discrimination on behalf of the FCC, hence the lawsuit.
Now, Dish and Ergen have struck back by arguing that all claims against them should be dismissed. In the filing made September 23, Steptoe LLP’s Echtman writes, “Frustrated that SGCI’s transaction financing expired and the merger agreement terminated, Plaintiffs have concocted a false narrative that the FCC’s actions must have been caused by a vast racist conspiracy against Mr. Kim. Not only do the claims asserted against Defendants DISH and Ergen lack any reasonable basis in fact or law, the Amended Complaint [filed August 9 by Kim’s team] wrongfully retaliates against both Dish and Dish’s Chairman for Dish’s legitimate exercise of its First Amendment right to petition the government on matters of public interest.”
Echtman also asserts that the Amended Complaint “was filed for an improper purpose—to harass Dish and Ergen—in violation of Rule 11(b)(1).”
The filing comes after Dish moved to dismiss Soo’s lawsuit earlier in September.
