A Las Vegas tabloid faced off with the far more conservative broadsheet that handles its business operations in an antitrust battle at the Ninth Circuit over the validity of a joint operating agreement.
Attorneys for the Las Vegas Sun and the Las Vegas Review-Journal asked a three-member panel of the Ninth Circuit to look closely at the Newspaper Preservation Act, a 1970 statute intended to provide limited antitrust protection for combining newspapers, to bolster their cases at oral arguments Thursday.
The problem is that the papers have competing interpretations of the plain text of the statute, which U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel P. Collins noted is riddled with quirks.
