Australia's Seven Network Launches $775 Million Lawsuit

TV broadcaster Seven Network Ltd. launched a landmark 1 billion Australian dollar ($775 million) lawsuit Sept. 12 against the Australian subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and other top media and telecommunications companies, alleging they conspired to bring down Seven's cable sports channel. More than 50 lawyers and legal assistants packed into Sydney's Federal Court for the start of the case, which has been described as one of the largest media trials in Australian history.

The case pits Seven against 22 respondents, including rival media organizations Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd., controlled by Australia's richest man, Kerry Packer, and News Ltd., the Australian unit of Murdoch's News Corp. empire. Australia's government-controlled telecommunications company, Telstra Corp. Two of the country's biggest football leagues also are named in the case. Seven alleges the defendants conspired in 1999 and 2000 to prevent the network from gaining broadcasting rights to several lucrative sporting events, leaving its cable sports network, C7, without a winter sports schedule. Seven scrapped the network in May 2002, saying it was no longer financially viable.

In his opening remarks, Seven's lawyer Jonathan Sumpton accused News Ltd. of using its management control of Australia's dominant cable network, Foxtel, to ensure that subscribers could not receive access to C7. He said News Ltd. also made predatory bids for major sports broadcasting rights to prevent C7 from competing against its own sports channel, Fox Sports. Sumpton's opening remarks are expected to last for most of the week, with the case expected to run up to nine months. +++++ ^Fox TV affiliate refuses to air anti-Bush campaign ad for Democrat in New York

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House of reps were today discussing how to normalise common law remedies. Various states have capped financial remedies in cases involving personal and work-related injuries. The feds now want to make sure that everything lines up so that someone who's been injured through negligence can't go shopping down a different avenue of complaint in search of a legislative loophole that'll enable them to achieve a higher payout than the capped personal injury. Anyone know if these types of inter-corporate shenanigans are likely to be covered by some sort of insurance policy? I'm interested in knowing whether this is the sort of contributory factor that affects the insurance companies' ability to offer liability ie, one of the reasons that they got the state governments to cap personal injury.