Court Dismisses NAAOM Suit Against Comcast, Others

A California district court has granted motions to dismiss a $20 billion suit against Comcast and a host of other defendants for allededly refusing to to do business with 100% African-American owned businesses.

The suit was filed last February by the National Association of African-American Owned Media and Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios.

The court had received motions from those defendants to dismiss the suit, which included from Time Warner Cable, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Urban League, Inc., Al Sharpton, National Action Network, Inc., and Meredith Attwell Baker, formerly a top government relations exec with Comcast's NBCU.

The suit was filed as Comcast was trying to get its merger with TWC through the FCC and Justice--it did not.

The court found that it did not have jurisdiction over all but Comcast, so dismissed the suits against all the other defendants.

As to Comcast--and for that matter all the other defendants if the court had had jurisdication, the court concluded that even if all the facts were true, there was not sufficient evidence of allged misconduct or more than a possibility that the defendants had acted unlawfully.

"Accepting all of the factual allegations in the complaint as true, the plaintiffs have failed to allege any plausible claim for relief,: the court said. "It is Ordered, that the motions to dismiss be, and hereby are, granted."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.