No joy again for the Seven Network and its owner, Kerry Stokes, in their long running C7 pay TV channel case, with a full bench of the Federal Court rejecting an appeal against the comprehensive loss in 2007 in the $200 million trade practices suit.
The decision was handed down in a brief hearing yesterday morning in the court in Sydney with Justices John Dowsett and Bruce Lander dismissing the appeal in joint reasons.
The third judge on the Full Court bench that heard the appeal, Justice John Mansfield, said he had reached a different view in two respects "on matters which do not affect the outcome of the appeal".
A summary of the 340 page judgment was published on the Federal Court website. The judgment itself and background follow the summary.
The summary makes clear Seven has again lost comprehensively.
Seven says its studying the decision, but to an non-legal type, it looks a pretty comprehensive loss and to appeal it further to the High Court doesn’t seem a good tactic.
The appeal, which was heard a year ago in November 2008, involved a smaller group of opponents than the 22 named in Seven’s original multi-million dollar case alleging a collusion to run its pay television arm, C7 out of business.
The victorious parties were News Ltd, Consolidated Media Holdings (now 22% owned by Seven), Telstra, Sky Cable and Foxtel. Foxtel is owned by Telstra and Sky Cable, itself a joint venture of News and CMH.
(That sort of makes Kerry Stokes both a loser, and a part winner out of the appeal.)
But that didn’t mean Kerry Stokes or Seven were going to open up after the judgment was given, as this brief statement made clear.
"Seven Network Limited is considering the 340 page judgment of the Full Federal Court in its pay television access case in which Seven’s appeal was dismissed today.
"In Seven’s opinion, the importance of the issues to its business justified pursuing this appeal, given that costs in appeals are far more contained as they focus on legal analysis.
"There will be no further statement whilst the full judgment is considered."
In the original suit Seven had also targeted Optus, the Ten Network, the AFL, the Australian Rugby League, the National Rugby League, and various subsidiaries of News, Cons Media and Telstra.
Justice Mansfield said no orders had been made about the costs of the appeal but he expected that "costs would follow the event", foreshadowing an order that Seven pay most of its opponents legal bills.
In a 1160-page judgment handed down in July 2007, Justice Ronald Sackville rejected all of Seven’s claims and criticised the cost and burden to the court of the 120-day hearing.
Seven spent $100 million on lawyers and expert witnesses and paid about 60% of the costs of its successful opponents.
Seven has already expenses this cost, so its impact is non-existent.
It paid $24 million to News, $13 million to Telstra, and undisclosed amounts to the others.
It might have been expensive, but the C7 case has been topped for length and size of judgment by ASIC’s failed case against Jodee Rich and Mark Silberman over the collapse of OneTel.
That went for much longer and the final judgment by Mr Justice Austin in the NSW Equity division of the Supreme Court was over 3,000 pages.
Seven shares eased 6 cents to $6.40 yesterday while the wider market was up 0.9%.
