LA County directs attorneys to weigh in on 12 states’ lawsuit to block Paramount-Warner merger 52%
By Steve Scauzillo72%
7/21/2026, 10:37:26 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Pessimism Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 23.3% saturation with 267 hits. Analysis detected 1,805 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,148 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 51.3% and a BS Rank of 52% (10,564 of 21,886 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 51.70% of the article peer group.
Los Angeles County will be joining 12 states, led by California, in a legal action that attempts to block Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros.
Discovery on grounds that the mega-merger would eliminate 2,500 local jobs in the the Hollywood entertainment industry.
In a unanimous vote, the Board of Supervisors directed the County Counsel to pursue participation in the lawsuit by filing a friend of the court brief, known as amicus curiae.
The purpose of such a filing is for a third party to influence the court on the ramifications of the merger.
The county’s attorneys also can lend Attorney General Rob Bonta declarations explaining the negative effects on jobs, people and businesses that are part of the Los Angeles County economy should the merger go through.
The county can also share the report commissioned by the board and produced by CVL Economics that said 2,500 local jobs could be lost amid a total of 6,000 job globally.
CVL is a Los Angeles-based economic consulting firm specializing in the media and entertainment industry.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose Third District includes the westside of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, said Monday’s granting of a temporary restraining order by District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín puts the $81 billion merger on hold for 14 days, to allow for the parties in court to be heard.
The temporary halt could be extended to 28 days.
That opens the door to a potential preliminary injunction that the states are also seeking to effectively block the deal.
“We have a critical opportunity to become a part of this,” Horvath said.
“The future of Los Angeles County’s entertainment industry and the livelihood of the people who make it possible are at stake.”
The board directed County Counsel “to explore every legal avenue to support the state’s case.”
Horvath has said the takeover bid comes with “potential anti-trust violations.”
Skydance-owned Paramount said Monday’s lawsuit “distorts settled antitrust law” and maintained its merger would create a “stronger competitor against dominant streaming and technology platforms who have harmed the market for theatrical exhibition and jobs in the entertainment industry.”
The company vowed to “vigorously defend” the transaction.
Warner deferred to Paramount for comment.
The U.S.
Department of Justice Antitrust Division approved the merger.
Clearly, L.A.
County Supervisors do not agree.
An amendment from Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents areas such as Burbank — home to Warner Bros studios, Walt Disney Studios and Netflix Animation Studios, plus many other entertainment enterprises — said the county must work toward saving the jobs of people living in the east San Fernando Valley.
“The film and TV industry is a cornerstone of the Southern California economy, supporting 171,000 entertainment sector jobs.
A single location shoot can inject hundreds of thousands of dollars into the economy per day,” she said.
In L.A.
County, about 325,000 workers are directly or indirectly employed by the entertainment industry each year, the county reported.
The county estimated an industry economic impact of $117.2 billion.
Barger ordered County Counsel to investigate all legal options regarding the merger and for the county to do everything possible to protect local entertainment jobs that would be lost.
This includes hits on small businesses such as catering companies, equipment rentals and dry cleaners reliant on the entertainment industry.
Reduced filming locally would shift more productions out of the area and make the local entertainment-dependent cities such as Burbank, Glendale, Universal City and others destabilized by a wave of unemployment and falling sales tax revenues.
“I understand if this merger goes forward there will be jobs lost and the headquarters of Paramount may move out of state,” she said.
The fight enjoined by L.A.
County pits them in a familiar spot: In opposition to President Donald Trump, who has endorsed the merger.
The county has opposed Trump’s cuts to healthcare as hurting the poor while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations.
The board has set up funding for those families left without a breadwinner taken by Trump-backed ICE raids, which some members have called illegal and barbaric.
“The U.S.
Department of Justice might think this merger is pro-competition.
But 12 states believe you can't build a healthy market out of a monopoly,” said Third District Supervisor Janice Hahn.
It would allow one corporation to control a third of all film releases and one-third of all basic cable programming in the United States, she said.
“It is corporate greed and we will fight it,” said Hahn.
“This merger needs to be left on the cutting room floor.”
Other industry analysts say a Warner-Paramount tie-up would bring together two of the five last legacy studios in Hollywood — as well as a host of TV networks, titles filling streaming libraries and news operations.
Warner’s HBO Max, fan favorites like “Harry Potter” and even CNN would come under the same roof of Paramount-owned CBS.
Hahn said her grandson, who sat in on the last board meeting when the motion was first introduced by Horvath, told her he was concerned about the "Harry Potter" franchise.
According to the CVL study, the new combined company would begin by carrying about $82 billion in gross debt, which is about seven times current annual profits, raising concerns whether this debt could be sustained.
Paramount Skydance projects about $6 billion in savings by cutting duplicate functions, streamlining technology and cloud systems and consolidating real estate and procurement, the report stated.
“Many of these areas are heavily based in Los Angeles County, meaning the county is particularly exposed to corporate consolidation,” the CVL report concluded.
All those who addressed the board Tuesday opposed the merger.
“When mergers like this happen, finances are cut.
There will be lost jobs,” said Anthony Robles.
He was also concerned that the owners of Paramount Skydance, David and Larry Ellison, would have too much control over content on the American news media.
First District Supervisor Hilda Solis said while this is bad for jobs and the county's economy, she also said it reflects poorly on future tourism.
Many people come to Hollywood to see the Walk of Fame and to be near the places where movie and TV magic has been created for decades.
“The film and TV industry has for 100 years shaped our social and cultural landscapes,” she said.
Many people still look at the old county hospital, a 1933 Art Deco building, and see it in the opening credits of the long-running ABC-TV soap opera “General Hospital.”
“People look at things, places where filming takes place and they are willing to come here,” she said.
With California leading the legal action to block the merger, the additional states joining the suit include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.
*The Associated Press contributed to this story.
*
Speakers
9speakers44%attributed speech638writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageParamount Skydance
46 attributed words9.0% of attributed speech88% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.