Dish Network declined comment on a report that it may...

New York Supreme Court is “relatively likely,” Barclays analyst James Ratcliffe said. Cablevision sued Echostar in 2008, claiming it breached a 15-year distribution agreement signed three years earlier to carry its Voom channels. Dish assumed related litigation when EchoStar was spun off as a separate hardware-related company. Voom had been part AMC Networks, which was spun off from Cablevision. “Dish has historically been willing to fight litigation to the bitter end,” Ratcliffe said. “In this case, however, we believe the company is more likely to be willing to settle, given the large absolute size of the potential downside” in the event that Cablevision and AMC prevail at trial. New York state rules require Dish, if it appeals a negative trial judgment, to post a bond for the entire value of the judgment, “increasing costs of an extended fight,” Ratcliffe said. The case could be settled as part of wide programming agreement involving Dish and AMC. A New York state appeals court earlier this year rejected Dish’s challenge to sanctions a lower court imposed on the satellite operator for allegedly destroying evidence in the suit. The New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld Judge Richard Lowe’s ruling that he could tell jurors about erased emails. Jurors could assume the email evidence would benefit Cablevision, Lowe said. Cablevision and AMC start the trial with a “huge head start” given that the jury is to assume that Dish destroyed records that supported Cablevision’s case, Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffet said in a research note. Dish terminated its agreement with Voom and Cablevision in 2008, claiming the cable operator didn’t invest $100 million annually on the HD service as agreed on. Lowe ruled that Dish should have started preserving records related to Voom in 2007, around the time it began weighing dropping the channel. Cablevision scrapped Voom in 2008.