THE REAL REASON DISH IS DROPPING AMC NETWORKS…

In a ruling filed on Thursday, April 26, 2012, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court denied DISH’s application to further appeal a prior trial court decision sanctioning it for bad-faith destruction of evidence in the ongoing VOOM HD/DISH litigation. The case has now been set for a trial beginning September 18th..

The case began in 2008, when VOOM HD (an indirect subsidiary of AMC Networks) sued DISH Network for breach of contract. The case concerns a contract in which DISH agreed to carry a suite of HD networks known as VOOM for 15 years. In early 2008, DISH improperly terminated the VOOM contract, and VOOM HD filed suit, seeking over $2.5 billion in damages.

In a pre-trial ruling, the trial court judge ruled that DISH had destroyed evidence in the case, citing DISH’s “pattern of egregious conduct and questionable – and, at times, blatantly improper – litigation tactics.â€ The Appellate Division recently affirmed the trial court ruling, writing that DISH “acted in bad faith in destroying electronically stored evidence.â€ And on April 26, 2012, the Appellate Division denied DISH leave to further appeal the decision The trial court has now set the trial date.

Within days of the denial of DISH’s final avenue of pre-trial appeal, DISH informed AMC Networks of its intention to drop its award-winning networks