A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from a group of consumers looking to challenge the $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros.
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín wrote that the plaintiffs — three current Paramount+ subscribers and two prospective subscribers — presented a lack of standing in their suit. She also ruled that the plaintiffs failed to establish “cognizable” economic fallout that would invoke antitrust regulation. However, she has allowed plaintiffs to revise their complaint and refile.
“The Complaint contains a boilerplate assertion of competitive harms, such as ‘lower quality and variety’ and ‘decreased consumer choice,’ but it fails to allege any facts to plausibly show how those claimed harms have materialized or would materialize,” she wrote. She later added, “Plaintiffs’ standing theory amounts to little more than the assertion that they are consumers who watch television and go to the movies, and therefore a merger between Entertainment companies would injure them.”
Judge Martínez-Olguín will also preside over the antitrust cases from a group of 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America, which both claim the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger will do irreparable harm to the entertainment industry. Those cases are set for trial on March 2, 2027.
