In late March 2008, Gibbs & Bruns literally hit the ground running to represent CC Media Holdings, Inc. in a tortious interference case arising out of CC Media’s $26 billion acquisition of Clear Channel Communications. CC Media claimed that a consortium of financial institutions, who had committed to fund the merger, were deliberately trying to force the termination of the merger agreement in order to avoid $3 billion in losses that the banks would incur if the merger closed and the banks were required to fund. Because CC Media’s opportunity to purchase Clear Channel would be lost if the merger did not close by June 12, 2008, the firm successfully worked with co-plaintiff Clear Channel to obtain temporary injunctive relief and an expedited trial setting of June 2nd. At the same time, our lawyers defeated – in Texas and New York state courts – the financial institutions’ repeated efforts to derail the case through procedural means such as removal, enforcement of purported forum selection clauses, and efforts to mandamus the Texas and New York trial courts. We successfully defeated a motion to dismiss in the trial court and successfully obtained dismissal of counterclaims that the financial institutions filed against CC Media in a related New York lawsuit.
Following two days of hearings on May 12th and 13th in Bexar County State Court in Texas, and the start of a trial between different parties in the New York lawsuit, Clear Channel announced that all parties to the New York and Texas cases had settled the dispute. Although Gibbs & Bruns was involved for only six weeks, our involvement was pivotal to CC Media’s ability to successfully close its $26 billion acquisition of Clear Channel.
