Delhi High Court rejects Bloomberg’s appeal against ZEE Entertainment’s defamatory article

ZEE tells High Court that an inaccurate Bloomberg article caused share price to drop 15%

New Delhi:

The Delhi High Court on Thursday upheld the trial court’s order directing Bloomberg Television Production Services India Private Limited (Bloomberg) to remove a defamatory article published on February 21 against ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEE) regarding the company corporate governance and business operations. the latter.

Additional District Judge (ADJ) Harjyot Singh Bhalla gave relief to ZEE, holding that ZEE had made a prima facie case for passing interim unilateral injunction and directed Bloomberg to remove the defamatory article from its platform within 1 day. One week after receiving the order.

Bloomberg filed a high court objection to ADJ’s order last week.

Judge Shalinder Kaur, who presided over the case, dismissed Bloomberg’s appeal and gave him three days to comply with the ADJ’s instructions.

The trial court prohibited Bloomberg from publishing, disseminating or publishing the article on any online or offline platform until the next hearing.

ZEE argued in the lawsuit that the Bloomberg article mentioned details related to ZEE’s corporate governance and business operations, was inherently inaccurate, and caused the company’s stock price to drop 15%, eroding investors’ wealth. The statement stated that the publication of the article was “false and inconsistent with the facts” and was premeditated and malicious to slander the company.

The article incorrectly stated that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had found $241 million in accounting issues at the company, while the above-mentioned regulator had not issued such an order, the article said.

ZEE said that despite the company’s firm rebuttal, the article wrongly published ZEE’s financial irregularities without any basis for an order from the regulator.

ZEE’s lawyers argued during Wednesday’s hearing that failure to grant the injunction prayed for could cause irreparable loss and harm to the company.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)