Newsmax re-filed its lawsuit against Fox News in Wisconsin on Thursday, restating its allegations that the Murdoch-owned cable news network illegally conspired to block the younger competitor from cable packages.
The network restated its allegations in its initial lawsuit, which claimed Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., “engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for U.S. right-leaning pay TV news, resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition, and Newsmax.”
The lawsuit had previously been filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida, but Judge Aileen Cannon, a Donald Trump appointee, dismissed the claims last week and said Newsmax filed a “shotgun” complaint, or one that simply summarized its previous allegations in each count.
Cannon gave Newsmax a Sept. 11 deadline to submit an amended complaint, but instead it opted to withdraw the case from Florida and re-file it in Wisconsin. A Newsmax spokesperson said the network can “re-file its complaint in any jurisdiction in which it suffered harm as a result of Fox’s actions.”
The new complaint reiterates most of the same issues Newsmax accused Fox News of last week, though it also alleged Fox violated Wisconsin state law by “block-booking,” or forcing networks to carry Fox’s lesser-watched channels if they choose to carry Newsmax.
A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to TheWrap’s immediate request for comment. A spokesperson previously said that “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” a statement Newsmax’s CEO Christopher Ruddy disputed to TheWrap last week.
