The Justice Department’s bid to reverse a district court’s approval of the AT&T-Time Warner merger will be heard Dec. 6.
A federal appeals court is slated to hear oral arguments that day, according to Reuters.
AT&T quickly closed on its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner on June 14, two days after getting the greenlight from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon who ruled against the government’s effort to block the deal in an antitrust trial.
The agency did not seek a stay following the decision, but in a somewhat surprising move, in July the Justice Department lodged an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging the ruling.
The DOJ had argued that the vertical merger, which gave AT&T ownership of HBO and CNN, among others, would hurt competition, raise prices for consumers and give AT&T too much power in carriage negotiations.
In a July filing with the court, the DOJ said Leon’s decision “rejected fundamental principles of economics” and that “the district court’s disregard of economic reasoning constitutes reversible error.”
“If AT&T is permitted to control Time Warner’s most valuable media assets, the merged firm will have both the incentive and the ability to raise its rivals’ costs and stifle growth of innovation, next-generation entrants that offer attractive alternatives to AT&T/DirecTV’s legacy pay-TV model – all to the detriment of American consumers,” the DOJ said.
AT&T acquired Time Warner’s Turner networks as part of the deal, but agreed to keep those assets separate from AT&T until Feb. 28, 2019 or the end of any appeal, whichever comes first.
When the DOJ first announced it would seek an appeal, AT&T General Counsel David McAtee said in a statement that Leon’s decision “could hardly have been more thorough, fact-cased, and well-reasoned.”