Oil Industry News Source Fights Subpoenas In US Antitrust Suit

Energy industry news and analysis provider Oil Price Information Service said it intends to appeal a federal judge’s order requiring it to turn over unpublished information in an antitrust lawsuit involving claims of gasoline price-fixing in California.

The Maryland-based fuel industry publication, which is not a defendant in the case, this week asked U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco to issue an order letting the company take an immediate challenge to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawyers for OPIS at Ballard Spahr said in a filing that Corley’s ruling on May 31 authorizing the subpoenas “profoundly implicates core protections for news organizations and their journalists.”

“The parties are pursuing subpoenas to OPIS that, between them, call for virtually every piece of unpublished newsgathering material that OPIS created and compiled over a multi-year period about an entire West Coast market,” Ballard Spahr partner Seth Berlin told Corley in the filing.

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