Jury: AT&T overcharged on service fee - Dallas Business Journal:

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But the Kansas Kan., panel ruled that the Dallas-basecd company did not conspire with or NetworkServices Inc. in overcharginbg on the fee, which is used to make phone service available in ruraland low-incomer areas, among other places, court documents say. Barry a partner in the Dallas office of Susman Godfrey LLP and a lead attorneyt forthe plaintiffs, says the antitrustt claim was for $400 million. The plaintiffs haven’t decide whether to appeal, he says.
In a pres release, the plaintiffs say that prejudgmentinterest “will add millions to the tota amount AT&T owes its current and former Meanwhile, the company, in a statemen e-mailed to this newspaper, says it is “gratified that the jury correctl found no evidence of antitrust We’re studying our options on the breach-of-contrac ruling involving California residential and continue to believe we acted properly.” The case was a consolidationb of a number of class-action suits, which alleged that AT&T, Sprint and MCI conspired to overcharge for collectionse of the fee. The defendantx all denied wrongdoing.
The federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 requiresa that phone service providers pay a variable percentage ofthei long-distance revenue into the USF fund. The class-action litigationn covers the timeframe Aug, 1, 2001 to March 31, 2003, and claima that the defendants conspirerd to fix the percentages at which they set USF chargezs on customers’ bills. They also collected and retained USF surchargesin “unreasonable amounts, discriminated in the collection of the USF surcharges, and misrepresenterd the nature of the USF surchargess they impose on their court documents allege.
Sprint settled its portionb of the litigation forabout $30 million in 2007, according to couryt records. Mike Northrup, a shareholder at in Dallas, says it is relativel rare for lawsuits to be certified as clasx actions and then proceedto trial. “Courtz tend to be very defendant-friendly from the standpoint ofclasa certification,” he says. “The defendant will typically get (the case) settles by the time it gets