What once appeared to be a funny dust-up between a couple of older gentlemen has gotten nasty. John Malone's Liberty Media (NASDAQ: LINTA) has long held a controlling interest in IACI (NASDAQ: IACI), run by former Hollywood mogul Barry Diller. Diller has had the right to vote Liberty's shares giving him de facto control of IACI.

Diller had made the decision to take IACI and break it into five publicly traded pieces. That probably made some sense. The Home Shopping Network does not belong under the same roof as Ask.com and Lending Tree. But, Malone has not seen enough bang in the IACI share price since the spin-offs were announced. The stock trades at just over $27, near its 52-week low.

Mr. Malone today moved to push out Diller and most of the board that supports him at IACI. Whether Malone can take away the rights Mr. Diller has to vote Liberty's shares is unclear.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in a response to Liberty's actions Mr. Diller said in a statement: "After reading this new salvo, I am beginning to think these people are insane. Everything they cite is hogwash. First of all, we have never asked the board to take action on any specific proposal high, low or no-vote. What we have done, which we thought was the responsible thing to do given this conflict, is to go to the Delaware court and ask them to tell us what rights IACI has or doesn't have."

Wall Street will just have to wait a few weeks to see who is insane and who is not.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Malone's Liberty fights to oust Diller at IACI originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.