Lawyers for Chuck Dolan’s Cablevision ripped into Dish Network yesterday, saying the pay-TV service wrongfully backed out of an HD service, leaving the Long Island cable company with “massive financial losses.”
Cablevision is seeking $2.4 billion in damages.
Four years after Dolan sued Charlie Ergen’s Dish, the heavyweight legal battle kicked off yesterday at Manhattan state court — with lawyers for both sides throwing legal haymakers before the eight-person jury.
“My client, Rainbow Media HD, was wronged and betrayed by EchoStar, which backed out of a contract that lasted 15 years after two years and left my client with massive financial losses,” Orin Snyder, a lawyer for AMC Networks, which was then owned by Cablevision, said in his opening statement.
AMC used to be called Rainbow.
Dish claims it ended the contract for Voom, the HD service, in 2007 because Cablevision didn’t live up to its end of the bargain.
Dish split off its EchoStar satellite business from its pay-TV business in 2008.
Dolan didn’t spend $100 million a year on programming, as the contract mandated, James Bennett, a Dish lawyer, said.
Dolan, who is expected to take the stand Monday morning, will tell the jury that Ergen, EchoStar’s chairman, was eager to work with him in creating the Voom joint venture, sources said.
But Ergen pulled the plug on Voom as HD evolved from a premium service providers could charge extra for to a standard service.
“Dish was pre-empted by a rival announcing more HD channels at half the price,” Snyder said.
Thomas Claps, a litigation analyst at Susquehanna Financial, told The Post, “The bottom line is, can overhead be included or is service limited to programming?”
Claps thinks the case stacks up in Cablevision’s favor since EchoStar destroyed evidence.
EchoStar’s side didn’t yet address that issue.
The outcome has big implications for AMC Networks, which houses AMC and IFC among other channels.
AMC is no longer carried by EchoStar sibling Dish. Both firms are controlled by Charlie Ergen.
The trial in front of Judge Richard Lowe is expected to last four weeks.