The battered Hollywood Foreign Press Association gets a judge to reject a lawsuit filed by a Norwegian entertainment reporter – this time forever.
A California judge has seen enough of a Norwegian entertainment journalist who faced the Hollywood Foreign Press Association because of its strict membership rules and close association with studios. On Wednesday, Kjersti Flaa’s antitrust claim against the Golden Globes organization was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that she will have no other opportunity to change her claims.
In November, United States district judge Stanley Blumenfeld first dismissed a lawsuit that claimed that HFPA had monopolized the foreign entertainment reporting market and excluded qualified candidates. At the time, the judge ruled that Flaa had insufficiently defined the precise market that was being monopolized. (“Entertainment news” was considered too “ambiguous”.)
Since then, the HFPA has been criticized for the favors granted to its 87 members – as well as the lack of diversity in its ranks.
In court, however, HFPA continued to maintain the advantage.
Flaa corrected her complaint with a per se a theory that would ultimately mean that the organization should be open to “all objectively qualified candidates”.
Judge Blumenfeld in his last request destroys him.
In analyzing the latest horizontal group boycott complaint, the judge writes that there are no inconclusive claims that HFPA has market power. “As the Claimants claim, Hollywood studios – not Defendants – control the coveted ‘access to talent’ for this narrowly defined brand of entertainment news,” notes Blumenfeld, adding later that the antitrust concept is tenuous. “If access to Hollywood talent is a necessary element for business survival, then Claimants cannot reasonably explain how they have succeeded as foreign entertainment news reporters for so many years without it.”
The decision goes to other flaws, from “defining the relevant product market in an artificially restricted way” with respect to how the HFPA supposedly divides geographic regions for members, not to consider the interchangeability of the product market.
The HFPA said in a statement on Wednesday: “We applaud the Court’s unequivocal rejection of Ms. Flaa’s and Ms. Robbins’ frivolous process, which has been filled with nothing more than lewd and false allegations against HFPA and the Meher members. Tatna, Tina Jøhnk Christensen, Aniko Navai and Aud Morisse. “
The fact that antitrust standards have become very high obstacles for claimants may be partly the reason for Flaa’s failure. However, in the absence of any second review of the appeal, HFPA and its lawyers at Latham & Watkins won the case.