Dish Calls for Sanctions Against Standard General

sanctions Tuesday. The Standard filing is “frivolous,” violates federal rules of civil procedure and infringes on Dish’s First Amendment rights, the filing said. Dish wants the court to sanction SGCI and its attorneys to cover all of Dish’s expenses from the case and dismiss the complaint. “Frustrated that SGCI’s transaction financing expired and the merger agreement terminated, Plaintiffs have concocted a false narrative that the FCC’s actions must have been caused by a vast racist conspiracy against Mr. Kim,” said the Dish filing, referring to Standard founder Soohyung Kim. The Standard complaint doesn’t show any evidence of a conspiracy but rather disparate parties that disliked the Standard/Tegna deal for different reasons, Dish said. “There is absolutely nothing actionable about a desire to see a deal fail, especially a deal that was artificially engineered to raise DISH’s costs,” Dish said. Standard’s conspiracy claims “rest on the mere fact” that attorney David Goodfriend, who represented unions against the Standard deal, has also worked for Ergen and Allen, Dish said. “This ‘conspiracy’ theory offends the First Amendment’s right to association,” Dish said. “This action was commenced in retaliation, as a rich man’s manifestation of a temper tantrum, in order to harass the parties that Plaintiffs hold responsible for the failure of their merger deal.” Standard didn't comment.