a breach of an 'exclusive' contract it had with Seven for provision of sports programming. Seven claimed damages of A$480 million (amended from the original A$1.1 billion). Soon after the case began, the suits against Network Ten and the AFL were settled in the Federal Court. Attempt to harm soccer During the trial it was revealed that C7 had purchased the rights to National Soccer League content with the intention of "suffocating" coverage of the sport to benefit the AFL (i.e., Australian rules football). This was evidenced by an email from C7 to the AFL complaining about the AFL's ingratitude. Judgment The judgment was handed down on 27 July 2007 and telecast live by the ABC, Sky News (owned in part by the Seven Media Group and PBL), Yahoo7, the Sydney Morning Herald website and ABC Online. C7 lost the case conclusively on most points with Justice Sackville declaring that, based upon the anti-competitive provisions of the Trade Practices Act upon which Seven relied, the case could not succeed. In a key point, he explained that "the reason is that even if each of the consortium respondents had the objective attributed to it by Seven—that of killing C7—achieving that objective could not have substantially lessened competition in the retail television market." Justice Sackville labelled Seven as "far from a helpless and innocent victim", being "the author of its own misfortune" and stating "there is more than a hint of hypocrisy in certain of Seven's contentions." He was unable to accept Seven's chairman Kerry Stokes as a reliable witness. The judge also commented on the hefty financial cost of the case, remarking that "in my view, the expenditure of $200 million and counting on a single piece of litigation is not only extraordinarily wasteful, but borders on the scandalous". The case has continually been labelled by both the legal and media sectors as one of the most extreme examples of "mega-litigation". Costs hearing In costs documents lodged on 27 August 2007, the NRL, one of the defendants in the case, argued for an indemnity costs order, the actual costs incurred by the parties, to be awarded against Seven, with the figure estimated at approximately $200 million. On 14 September 2007, Seven agreed to a A$23.5-million costs settlement with News Limited, the Australian Football League, the National Rugby League, Channel Ten and pay-TV group Austar. Appeal In December 2009, Seven lost an