After the Court of Common Pleas in Trumbull County OH issued a Temporary Restraining Order on behalf of Sagittarius Communications to restore the licenses of Whiplash Radio’s 1540 WYCL Niles and 1570 WHTX Warren OH in March, the FCC has reinstated the licenses and returned the 2013 sale application of the stations to Sagittarius to a pending status.

Sagittarius first agreed to purchase the two stations from Whiplash in 2012. Following a breach of contract lawsuit the following year leading to a Settlement Agreement in 2013 where the buyer began operating the stations via LMA. The FCC never acted on the sale due to unpaid regulatory fees by Whiplash before president Chris Lash requested the licenses be dismissed in February. The court ordered Lash to submit requests to the FCC to reinstate the licenses and pay all debts owed to the FCC (as both stations are in red light delinquency) within five days and take all necessary actions to transfer the licenses to Sagittarius. After Lash commented that Sagittarius “breached its contract
in both the sale and the approved LMA for the Stations. There is no legal standing for their request,” the court injunction found that Lash violated the Purchase Agreement and the Settlement Agreement and ordered him to refrain from: 1) further attempts to terminate the licenses for the Stations; 2) interfering with Sagittarius’s rights under the Purchase Agreement and the Settlement Agreement; and 3) interfering with Sagittarius’s effort to obtain consent for assignment of the Station’s licenses.