Sky Angel Appeal Using Wrong Standard, Say Discovery, Animal Planet
Sky Angel's appeal of a lower court's 2016 decision denying its claims of improper termination of affiliation agreements (see 1701250002) "takes the Court through a maze of detours and dead-end turns" before wrongly insisting on a de novo review instead…
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of the proper clear error review, said Discovery Communications and its Animal Planet in a response brief (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Discovery/Animal Planet said U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow of Greenbelt, Maryland, decided Discovery exercised its rights to terminate the Sky Angel contract in good faith and that Sky Angel's appeal "never engages with the highly deferential clear error standard, nor could Sky Angel come close to meeting it." It said Sky Angel, by trying to appeal the lower court's summary judgment decision, is trying to evade the trial record since the law clearly won't allow summary judgment review once there has been a bench trial. Discovery/Animal Planet also said Sky Angel claims are foreclosed by its breach of contractual obligation to tell Discovery if another programmer ceased providing programming -- an obligation Sky Angel breached when it didn't give notice C-SPAN pulled its programming for similar reasons as Discovery. Counsel for Sky Angel didn't comment Thursday. Along with litigation against Discovery, Sky Angel also has an open program access complaint against the programmer (see 1207160065).