Telemundo Network Group v. Azteca Intern.

957 So. 2d 705, 2007 WL 1610140
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedJune 6, 2007
Docket3D05-259
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 957 So. 2d 705 (Telemundo Network Group v. Azteca Intern.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Telemundo Network Group v. Azteca Intern., 957 So. 2d 705, 2007 WL 1610140 (Fla. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

957 So.2d 705 (2007)

TELEMUNDO NETWORK GROUP, LLC, Appellant,
v.
AZTECA INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION d/b/a Azteca America Network and Bolas, LLC, Appellees.

No. 3D05-259.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.

June 6, 2007.

*707 Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, and Christopher P. Hammon, and Erik W. Scharf, and Larissa C. Garriga; Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, and Angel Castillo, Jr., Miami, for appellant.

Podhurst Orseck, and Stephen F. Rosenthal; Akerman Senterfitt, and James M. Miller, and Julie E. Nevins, and Francisco A. Rodriguez, Miami, for appellees.

Before GREEN, RAMIREZ, and ROTHENBERG, JJ.

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

RAMIREZ, J.

We grant the motion for rehearing. Thus, we withdraw our opinion filed April 12, 2006, and substitute the following in its place.

Telemundo Network Group, LLC appeals the trial court's final order dismissing its action against Azteca International Corporation and Bolas, LLC, on forum non conveniens grounds. We reverse because the claims against Azteca America and Bolas should not have been dismissed on these grounds.

I. The Parties and Their Ties to Florida

The parties involved are all United States corporations doing business in the United States. Telemundo is a Delaware limited liability company authorized to do business in Florida and headquartered in Hialeah, Florida. It operates a Spanish-language broadcast television network that provides programming, including soccer games, to stations in the United States. Azteca International Corporation, a Delaware corporation with its principal business office located in New York City, does business as Azteca America Network, a direct competitor of Telemundo. Azteca America also supplies sports programming to its United States affiliate television stations, including stations in Florida. Bolas, LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with its principal business office located in Tucson, Arizona. Bolas buys and sells rights to broadcast television programming.

In May 2001, Bolas entered into one-year written license agreement with Telemundo, giving Telemundo the exclusive broadcast rights to televise the regular season home games of the Jaguares in the United States. The Jaguares are a professional Mexican soccer team. Bolas and Telemundo renewed this agreement in 2002 and 2003. Pursuant to this license agreement and its renewals, Telemundo televised the Jaguares home games in the United States continuously from 2001 through December 2003. The 2003 license agreement provides that Florida law governs the agreement and that the state and federal courts of Miami-Dade County, Florida, have exclusive jurisdiction over Bolas and Telemundo for any litigation arising from this agreement. Telemundo recorded the 2003 license agreement in the public records of the United States Copyright *708 Office in Washington, D.C. on February 2, 2004.

In June 2003, while Telemundo was broadcasting the Jaguares' home games in the United States, a Mexican entity known as Chiapas Futbol Club, S.A. de C.V. acquired ownership of the Jaguares. The sale of the team specifically included the agreement to honor the May 2001, three-year license agreement whereby Bolas owned the exclusive broadcast rights to televise the Jaguares' home games in the United States through the end of 2004. On January 16, 2004, Telemundo notified Azteca America that Telemundo held the exclusive broadcast rights to all of the Jaguares home games in the United States through the end of the 2004 season.

Telemundo alleges that on January 17, 2004, Bolas failed to transmit to Telemundo, in violation of the 2003 license agreement, the satellite signal for the Jaguares home game that Telemundo had already scheduled and promoted throughout the United States for that date. Consequently, Telemundo was forced to broadcast to its viewers nationwide a different program in that time slot. Telemundo immediately informed Bolas that it was in material breach of the 2003 agreement. Thereafter, Bolas failed to transmit any of the remaining Jaguares games to Telemundo until the team's participation in the 2004 season ended on May 29, 2004, while Azteca America broadcasted all of the games in the United States. In February 2004, the Chiapas Futbol Club notified Telemundo that on some prior date, Chiapas Futbol Club had granted an exclusive license to T.V. Azteca to televise the Jaguares home games for the 2004 season, in Mexico, the United States, and other countries.

II. Telemundo's Action in the Trial Court

Telemundo's Amended Complaint against Azteca America and Bolas sought damages against Bolas for breach of the license agreement and alleged that Bolas failed to provide a satellite feed to Telemundo for the Jaguares home games pursuant to the agreement. Telemundo also sought damages against Bolas that it allegedly sustained as a direct and proximate result of the alleged breach of contract by Bolas. Telemundo sued Azteca America for intentional and unjustifiable tortious interference with the contractual relationship between Telemundo and Bolas, and for conversion, alleging that, with actual knowledge of the existence of Telemundo's claim to property rights to broadcast the Jaguares home games in the United States, Azteca America intentionally converted those rights to its own profit and to the detriment of Telemundo, by transmitting certain games in Florida and other places throughout the United States.

In response, Azteca America filed a motion to dismiss alleging forum non conveniens, failure to join indispensable parties, and failure to state a cause of action. Bolas answered the amended complaint. The trial court agreed first to hear argument on Azteca America's forum non conveniens grounds. After holding two hearings on the issue, the trial court granted Azteca America's motion to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds and entered a commendably thorough, twenty-page order addressing all the factors outlined in Kinney System, Inc. v. Continental Insurance Co., 674 So.2d 86 (Fla.1996). The order, however, did not deal with Telemundo's claims against Bolas separately, but rather dismissed the claims against Bolas along with the claims against Azteca America. Telemundo then filed this appeal.

III. Kinney Factors Analysis

In Kinney System, Inc. v. Continental Insurance Co., 674 So.2d 86 (Fla.1996), the Florida Supreme Court held that a trial court's ruling, granting or denying a motion *709 to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds, must be reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard. Kinney, 674 So.2d at 93-94. But as this Court stated in Kawasaki Motors Corp. v. Foster, 899 So.2d 408, 410-11 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005), "review of the Kinney standard has evolved into an abuse of discretion/de novo standard, depending on the extent of the trial judges [sic] analysis and whether the appellate record is sufficient to allow the reviewing court to reach its own conclusions." (citing Aerolineas Argentinas, S.A. v. Gimenez, 807 So.2d 111, 115 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002)(Sorondo, J., specially concurring))(citing Bacardi v. De Lindzon, 728 So.2d 309 (Fla. 3d DCA 1999), app'd, 845 So.2d 33 (Fla.2002)).

In Kinney, the Florida Supreme Court held that a trial court presented with a motion to dismiss on the basis of forum non conveniens must conduct a four-step analysis, later codified in Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.061(a), which provides that:

(a) Grounds for Dismissal.

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Bluebook (online)
957 So. 2d 705, 2007 WL 1610140, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/telemundo-network-group-v-azteca-intern-fladistctapp-2007.