Copyright Deadline
A carriage battle may see all the Disney-owned channels disappear from YouTube TV tomorrow, but today the Bob Iger-run company and the Google-owned platform have reached a detente over an executive they both wanted working for them. “A Notice of Settlement of Entire Case has been filed in this case,” said an order placed in the LA Superior Court docket Wednesday. By this “entire case,” Disney and YouTube mean the breach of contact suit that the Mouse House filed in June to stop YouTube from poaching distribution exec Justin Connolly. Today’s order follows a filing late-ish on October 28 from Disney’s Mitchell Silberer & Knupp lawyers first announcing a deal over the clearly much in demand Connolly had been reached, sort of. “The settlement agreement conditions dismissal of this matter on the satisfactory completion of specified terms that are not to be performed within 45 days of the date of the settlement,” Tuesday’s document stated. “A request for dismissal will be filed no later than (date): January 5, 2026.” As of right now, an early morning hearing in DTLA on the dismissal is set for that January 5, 2026 date. As is almost always the case in such cases, details of the settlement are under lock and key. Yet, with Judge James C. Chalfant back in June rejecting Disney’s motion for a restraining order against Connolly actually working at YouTube, clearly Disney blinked here. Contacted by Deadline Wednesday, all the company would say is that “the parties have settled their dispute.” Jones Day lawyers for YouTube did not respond to request for comment on the settlement and the state of the case. Back in the early part of this past summer, Disney sought a preliminary injunction to block recently departed president of Disney Platform Distribution Connolly from starting a new job at the Google-owned platform as global head of media and sports. Arguing that long time employee Connolly was exiting with a lot of Disney institutional memory, the Burbank-based company also noted the exec had inked a new January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2027 contract in November 2024. “Critically, Connolly leads the Disney team negotiating a license renewal with YouTube,” the home of Mickey Mouse said in their initial filing. “Connolly has intimate knowledge of Disney’s other distribution deals, the financial details concerning Disney’s content being licensed to YouTube, and Disney’s negotiation strategies, both in general and in particular with respect to YouTube.” As was made evident a couple of months later, that argument didn’t go far with the judge. The decision to stop Disney’s restraining order aims was likely due to the guardrails that the global video platform said it was putting up around Connolly in his new YouTube gig. YouTube said in its own response filing in June that Connolly will “not be involved in any capacity with YouTube’s license agreement negotiations with Disney.” In fact, they insisted his new employment agreement “demands that he continue to adhere to his confidentiality obligations to Disney, and confirms he cannot bring, use or disclose any of Disney’s confidential or proprietary information during his work at YouTube.” In rejecting the restraining order and allowing Connolly to start his duties at YouTube, Judge Chalfant did open the door for Disney to “file a motion for preliminary injunction.” They clearly took a different route, as this week’s filings make evident.
