SES further explains FCC claim on Intelsat
October 2, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Lawyers acting for SES have submitted a detailed document to the Bankruptcy Court handling Intelsat’s Chapter 11 reconstruction. The move is made in response to a successful appeal by SES in its ‘breach of contract’ claim for about $421 million (€399.1m) and damages relating to the 50/50 agreement and share of the FCC’s C-band compensation.
The submission states: “The case now must be viewed against the backdrop of the District Court’s considered and thorough analysis [which] devastates Intelsat’s theory of the case. The [Appeal] Court disagreed with Intelsat’s restrictive reading of the Consortium Agreement, repeatedly emphasised the strength of SES’s extrinsic evidence, and specifically rejected each of the arguments about the evidence that Intelsat previously relied on in this Court and on appeal.”
SES asks that the Bankruptcy Court’s “role now is to render a decision that is consistent with ‘both the letter and the spirit’ of the [Appeal] Court’s decision.”
“The [Appeal] Court found SES’s evidence ‘extensive and significant,’ ‘substantial,’ ‘very important,’ and ‘perhaps outcome-determinative’. The [Appeal] Court also specifically rejected each of the four arguments that Intelsat advanced (and this Court adopted) in support of its position that the extrinsic evidence favored its restrictive reading of the Agreement. With those arguments gone, Intelsat has no leg to stand on,” added the lawyers’ submission.
The SES lawyers argue that Intelsat is liable for breach of the C-band consortium agreement. They state, following on from the Appeal Court’s ruling that Intelsat and its sister companies are “jointly and severally” liable for roughly $421 million in damages.
Intelsat is entitled to submit its own argument.