Opinion ID: 1274444
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The District Court's February 5, 2007 Opinion and Order

Text: On February 5, 2007, the District Court issued a decision granting TWC's motion. The District Court determined that TWC had met its burden of showing that each of the challenged advertisements was likely to be proven literally false. Addressing the television commercials, the District Court held that the meaning of particular statements had to be determined in light of the overall context, and not in a vacuum as urged by DIRECTV. Given the commercials' obvious focus on HD picture quality, the District Court found that the Simpson's assertion that a viewer cannot get the best picture out of some big fancy big screen TV without DIRECTV and Shatner's quip that settling for cable would be illogical could only be understood as making the literally false claim that DIRECTV HD is superior to cable HD in picture quality. See Time Warner Cable, Inc., 475 F.Supp.2d at 305-06. As for the Internet Advertisements, the District Court found that the facially false depictions of cable's picture quality could not be discounted as mere puffery because it was possible that consumers unfamiliar with HD technology would actually rely on the images in deciding whether to hook up their HD television sets to DIRECTV or analog cable. See id. at 306-08. In assessing irreparable harm vel non, the District Court observed that under Second Circuit case law, irreparable harm could be presumed where the movant demonstrates a likelihood of success in showing literally false defendant's comparative advertisement which mentions plaintiff's product by name. Id. at 308 (quoting Castrol, Inc. v. Quaker State Corp., 977 F.2d 57, 62 (2d Cir.1992) (internal quotation marks omitted)). The District Court acknowledged that the Revised Shatner Commercial and the Internet Advertisements did not specifically name TWC, but concluded that a presumption of irreparable harm was nevertheless appropriate because the advertisements made explicit references to cable, and in the markets where TWC is the franchisee, cable is functionally synonymous with Time Warner Cable. See id. As for the Revised Simpson Commercial, the District Court reasoned that although the advertisement did not explicitly reference cable, irreparable harm should be presumed because TWC is DIRECTV's main competitor in markets served by TWC. Id. The District Court further noted that DIRECTV had breached the stipulation by continuing to run the contested commercials and that this breach also supported a finding of irreparable harm. See id. at n. 5. In accordance with its opinion, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction barring DIRECTV from disseminating, in any market in which [TWC] provides cable service, (1) the Revised Simpson Commercial and Revised Shatner Commercial, and any other advertisement disparaging the visual or audio quality of TWC or cable high-definition (HDTV) programming as compared to that of DIRECTV or satellite HDTV programming; and (2) the Internet Advertisements and any other advertisement making representations that the service provided by Time Warner Cable, or cable service in general, is unwatchable due to blurriness, distortion, pixellation or the like, or inaudible due to static or other interference.