Dec 16 (Reuters) - Warner Bros Discovery's ( WBD )

WarnerMedia has resolved a lawsuit that accused law firm

Zimmerman Reed of engaging in ethical misconduct and lodging

thousands of baseless arbitration claims in order to force a

settlement payout.

The two sides said in a New York County Supreme Court filing

on Friday that they were discontinuing the case with prejudice,

which means it cannot be refiled.

Lawyers for WarnerMedia and partners at Minneapolis,

Minnesota-based Zimmerman Reed did not immediately respond to

requests for comment on the filing, which did not disclose the

terms of any settlement.

WarnerMedia sued Zimmerman Reed in May, after the law firm

told the company and its affiliate Discovery Digital that it was

representing thousands of purported arbitration clients alleging

that the Discovery video streaming platform illicitly disclosed

their viewing history to Meta.

The lawsuit, which sought to disqualify Zimmerman Reed from

proceeding with the privacy claims, accused the firm of trying

to extract a massive settlement by leveraging the threat of huge

administrative fees associated with large-scale individual

arbitrations.

WarnerMedia and Discovery alleged that one of Zimmerman

Reed's managing partners and other professionals at the firm had

posed as claimants in privacy arbitrations brought by other law

firms in order to "surreptitiously gain access to information"

to use in their own mass arbitration campaign.

Zimmerman Reed countered in a June court filing that

WarnerMedia's disqualification petition was "frivolous on its

face."

The case is the latest in which companies facing mass

arbitrations have taken the offensive against law firms bringing

such claims.

French skin care company L'Occitane in February accused

Zimmerman Reed of "manufacturing" mass arbitration claims under

a California wiretapping law. The lawsuit and arbitration claims

were dismissed by a federal judge in April. Zimmerman Reed

denied wrongdoing.

Another plaintiffs law firm, Keller Postman, has been

engaged in an escalating legal battle with streaming platform

Tubi and its lawyers at Jenner & Block. Fox Corp-owned Tubi

accused Keller Postman in June of filing thousands of

"cookie-cutter" arbitration claims over allegedly discriminatory

targeted ads without investigating the facts.

Keller Postman has since asked a judge to disqualify Jenner

from representing Tubi, and is also seeking a court order in Los

Angeles that would block Tubi and Jenner from using any

materials they obtained from a private investigator. Both sides

have denied any wrongdoing.

The case is WarnerMedia v. Zimmerman Reed, New York County

Supreme Court, No. 652500/2024

For WarnerMedia: Jay Musoff and Evan Farber of Loeb & Loeb

For Zimmerman Reed: David Wilck and Carol Lastorino of

Rivkin Radler