The consent decree filed on 30 September 2026 in case 4:26-cv-07116 (document 267) orders no sale of any business; a sale of Miramax or cable channels applies only after a future uncured breach, so nothing has to be sold.
Hunch. Rob Bonta said he would take only structural remedies, but every account of the framework agreed on Monday describes conduct terms, guardrails for CNN, penalties tied to the thirty-film promise and a temporary separation of the studios, with no sale named.
The remedies market resolves on the court register for The State of California v. Paramount Skydance Corporation, case 4:26-cv-07116 in the Northern District of California, read on 15 October 2026. It resolves YES if the settlement document filed there orders Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery to sell any business, network, studio or station to a third party. It resolves NO if the filed document contains no such order, and also NO if no settlement document has been filed by that day. Holding a business apart, ring-fencing it or running it separately is not a sale. If the register cannot be read, the California Attorney General's newsroom settles it, then reports from Reuters and the Financial Times.
We found ten deals like this since 2004. Each was a large US media or telecom merger where a competition case against it ended in a settlement. We counted the days from the settlement being filed in court to the day the buyer reported the deal complete. We checked whether that took ten days or less, the gap between this settlement and 1 October, when the daily payment starts. We picked the ten cases closest to this one, not the newest. One caution: the Justice Department settled all ten, so the same body set the terms every time.