Federal judge rules that Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios can move forward with $10B lawsuit against Charter Communications

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Los Angeles, CA – October 24, 2016 — Entertainment Studios Networks, Inc. announced today that Federal District Court Judge George H. Wu denied Charter Communications’ Motion to Dismiss ESN’s $10 billion lawsuit against Charter for racial discrimination in contracting in violation of Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. §1981. This is a historic ruling.

“Today was a huge victory for my client,” said attorney Skip Miller, Partner, Miller Barondess, LLP in Los Angeles and Plaintiff’s lead counsel. “The $10 billion racial discrimination lawsuit will move forward against Charter Communications. The judge addressed the complexities of this case and discovery will commence immediately. We have direct and circumstantial evidence that we put forth in our lawsuit. We have evidence of racial bias harbored by top level Charter executives with decision-making authority, and allege, in detail, the discriminatory treatment ESN suffered at the hands of these executives. These well-pleaded allegations, combined with Charter’s internal racial issues, lack of contracting and doing business with 100 percent African American-owned media, were sufficient to defeat Charter’s Motion to Dismiss and we look forward to trial by jury. Separately, we fully expect the dismissal of ESN’s $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast to be overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals where we are under appeal.”

“Everybody talks about diversity, and everybody complains about the lack of diversity and economic inclusion,” said Byron Allen, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Entertainment Studios. “Today, we made history by doing something about it. This lawsuit was filed to provide distribution and real economic inclusion for 100 percent African American-owned media. The cable industry spends $70 billion a year licensing cable networks and 100 percent African American-owned media receives ZERO. This is completely unacceptable. We will not stop until we achieve real economic inclusion for 100 percent African American-owned media.”

“Charter will now have to open up ALL their contracts which will show the world that they do not do business with 100% African American-owned media out of the billions of dollars they spend on programming every year,” said Mark DeVitre, President, National Association African American-Owned Media (NAAAOM). “Simply put, the contracts and the numbers do not lie, and they will show racial discrimination, lack of economic inclusion for African American-owned media, and blatant racism. In my opinion, Charter’s CEO, Tom Rutledge, has done his stockholders a huge disservice by not sitting down with us, but instead pretending Reverend Al Sharpton speaks for all African Americans which in itself is racist.”

Attached is the court’s opinion. It was issued as a tentative ruling at the beginning of the hearing, and it was made final at the end of the hearing.

About Entertainment Studios
Chairman and CEO Byron Allen founded Entertainment Studios in 1993. Headquartered in Los Angeles, it has offices in New York, Chicago, Denver, and Raleigh. Entertainment Studios owns seven 24-hour HD cable television networks serving nearly 80 million subscribers: PETS.TV, COMEDY.TV, RECIPE.TV, CARS.TV, ES.TV, MYDESTINATION.TV, and JUSTICE CENTRAL.TV. The company also produces, distributes, and sells advertising for 40 television programs, making it one of the largest independent producers/distributors of first-run syndicated television programming for broadcast television stations. With a library of over 5,000 hours of owned content across multiple genres, Entertainment Studios provides video content to broadcast television stations, cable television networks, mobile devices, multimedia platforms, and the World Wide Web. Our mission is to provide excellent programming to our viewers, online users, and Fortune 500 advertising partners.

ESN is the parent company of theGrio.com and is a completely 100 percent African-American owned company with seven networks.