Paramount Settlement Hearing: Faust Suit Dismissed Oct 21, 2026
By Settlement Insight Data Desk · Reviewed by Leonard GoldbergPublished
Paramount Merger Suit Dismissed Again at the October 21 Hearing: Judge Gives Consumers 21 Days to Refile, Warns There May Be No Third Try — Still No Money for Subscribers
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Paramount settlement hearing: what the judge decided on October 21, 2026
The judge threw out the last consumer lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger for a second time, but gave the plaintiffs one more chance to refile. The hearing that our Paramount lawsuit page listed for October 22 took place a day earlier. In her written order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín says Paramount’s motion to dismiss “was heard before this Court on October 21, 2026,” and that “the Court GRANTS Defendants’ motion.” The order was signed and filed the same day as Dkt. 102 in Faust v. Paramount Skydance Corporation, No. 4:26-cv-03790, in the Northern District of California.
The order ends with the key sentence: “The Court allows Plaintiffs to file a further amended complaint within 21 days from the date of this order.” By our count, the 21st day after October 21, 2026 is November 11, 2026. The judge also added a warning: “The Court is very unlikely to permit further amendment as to any claim not sufficiently pleaded in the next amended complaint.”
Is there money for you? No. Faust is a private lawsuit that tries to undo or limit the merger. It is not a settlement, and it has no fund, no claim form and no administrator. The separate “Paramount settlement” with the states is a consent decree. It pays nothing to subscribers either (see below).
Why the case was dismissed again
Five consumers filed the suit on April 30, 2026 under Section 7 of the Clayton Act. They challenged both Skydance’s purchase of Paramount and Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. The judge first dismissed it on August 5, 2026 (Dkt. 79) for lack of standing. The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint on August 14, 2026 (Dkt. 81), and Paramount moved to dismiss again (Dkt. 87).
This time the court decided only one issue: “The Court focuses its attention on the issue of antitrust standing and does not reach the remaining arguments in favor of dismissal.” It rejected both kinds of harm the plaintiffs alleged:
- The Paramount+ price increase. According to the order, the increase was announced in November 2025 and took effect in January 2026, before Paramount and Warner Bros. signed their merger agreement in February 2026. Only two of the five plaintiffs paid it. The court held that “the monetary harm of the price increase cannot support antitrust standing as presently pleaded.”
- The loss of competition. The plaintiffs argued that consumers can always sue to stop a merger between rivals. The court answered: “But that is not the law.” It found that the plaintiffs “continue to fail to allege any facts to plausibly show how those claimed harms have materialized or would materialize.”
The court still allowed one more amendment because “Plaintiffs may yet be able to plausibly allege antitrust standing,” while noting that they “have now presented two deficient pleadings.” The amended complaint may not add new claims or parties unless the court or Paramount agrees.
Who gets what: no money for subscribers, viewers or moviegoers
Nobody gets a payment from either Paramount case. The states’ case, The State of California v. Paramount Skydance Corporation, No. 4:26-cv-07116, ended with a consent decree that the judge signed on September 30, 2026 (Dkt. 267). The case was marked terminated on October 1, 2026. The decree says “no person or entity is intended to be a third-party beneficiary of any provision of this Consent Decree for any reason,” and only the states can enforce it: it is “enforceable by any Plaintiff State, acting by and through its Attorney General.”
The only money that went to ordinary people came from the deal itself. The merger closed on October 6, 2026, and according to the company’s announcement, “WBD shareholders received an amount in cash equal to $31.01666668 per share.” That money went through brokerage accounts. There was no claim to file.
Even if Faust is revived, it would not pay money to the public. The plaintiffs’ pending motion asks the court to make Paramount “hold and operate separately” the Warner Bros. Discovery businesses needed to keep HBO Max and Paramount+ independent. It expressly does not ask to reverse the deal: “not rescission of the completed closing.”
What to do, and how to tell whether a Paramount settlement email is real
There is nothing to file and no deadline for consumers. The 21-day deadline in the October 21 order applies only to the five plaintiffs’ lawyers. There is no settlement administrator, no settlement website and no payment schedule for individuals in either case.
The court docket we reviewed shows no settlement for subscribers, so any email, text or post that asks you to “register” for a Paramount, Skydance or Warner Bros. settlement payment, pay a processing fee or enter your Paramount+ or HBO Max login is not connected to either case. Do not click such links. If you think the merger broke the consent decree, contact your state attorney general, because only the plaintiff states can enforce it.
What happens next
These are the next dated steps in the court papers. Where a date is our own arithmetic, we say so.
- October 27, 2026: Compliance Monitor. The consent decree requires Paramount to appoint an internal Compliance Monitor “within twenty-one (21) days of Closing.” Counting from the October 6 closing, that is October 27 by our count.
- November 5, 2026: Independent Film Fund. The decree requires the fund to be formed “within thirty (30) days of Closing” (our count).
- November 11, 2026: deadline for a new complaint in Faust. This is 21 days from the October 21 order, by our count. The order does not say what happens if no new complaint is filed.
- December 3, 2026, 2:00 p.m.: preliminary-injunction hearing. The plaintiffs set this date in their motion filed October 16, 2026 (Dkt. 100), for Courtroom 5 at 1301 Clay Street in Oakland. The motion relies on the First Amended Complaint, which has now been dismissed. The docket entries we reviewed through October 22, 2026 do not show whether the hearing remains on the calendar.
The day after the hearing, on October 22, 2026, a transcript order was entered as Dkt. 103. It is not publicly available. We will update this story when a new complaint is filed or the court rules again.
Who actually owns Paramount, and is the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal done?
Who actually owns Paramount? After the October 6, 2026 closing, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery became one company called Skydance, traded on the New York Stock Exchange as SKYD. Its chairman and CEO is David Ellison. According to the company’s closing announcement, “The Ellison Family holds the largest equity stake in Skydance,” and the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners together hold “100% of the combined company’s voting shares.” The deal included $47 billion in new equity investment. The company also says its streaming products “will unify into a single service over time.”
Is the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal done? No, that deal is dead. Netflix’s quarterly report filed October 21, 2026 says Netflix agreed on December 4, 2025 to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming and studio businesses, and that on February 27, 2026 Warner Bros. Discovery terminated the agreement to sign with Paramount. Paramount Skydance, “on behalf of WBD, paid a $ 2.8 billion termination fee owed to Netflix.” That fee was paid between the companies. It is not a settlement, and none of it goes to consumers.
What are the lawsuits against Warner Bros? The two merger cases on this page are the states’ case, now closed under the consent decree, and the consumer case Faust, which the court dismissed on October 21 but allowed the plaintiffs to refile. This page does not cover other cases against Warner Bros. or the company’s finances. For settlements that still pay, see our list of open class action settlements.
