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

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But the Kansas City, Kan., panel ruled that the Dallas-based company did not conspire with or NetworkServicezs Inc. in overcharging on the fee, which is used to make phoner service available in ruralkand low-income areas, among other places, court documents say. Barrt Barnett, a partner in the Dallas office of Susma Godfrey LLP and a lead attorney for the says the antitrust claim wasfor $400 million. The plaintiffzs haven’t decided whether to appeal, he says.
In a pressz release, the plaintiffs say that prejudgmenrtinterest “will add millions to the total amount AT&T owes its current and former Meanwhile, the company, in a statement e-mailedc to this newspaper, says it is “gratifieds that the jury correctly found no evidencer of antitrust activities. We’re studyin g our options on the breach-of-contract rulinfg involving Californiaresidential customers, and continue to believe we acteed properly.” The case was a consolidation of a number of class-actionj suits, which alleged that Sprint and MCI conspired to overcharge for collections of the fee. The defendantw all denied wrongdoing.
The federal Telecommunicationss Act of 1996 requires that phone servicew providers pay a variable percentage oftheir long-distanc e revenue into the USF fund. The class-actiomn litigation covers the timeframe Aug, 1, 2001 to March 31, and claims that the defendantws conspired to fix the percentages at whicn they set USF charges on customers’ They also collected and retainede USF surcharges in “unreasonable amounts, discriminated in the collection of the USF and misrepresented the nature of the USF surcharge s they impose on their court documents allege. Sprint settled its portion of the litigatiomn forabout $30 million in 2007, accordin to court records.
Mike Northrup, a shareholdef at in Dallas, says it is relativelyg rare for lawsuits to be certified as clases actions and then proceedto “Courts tend to be very defendant-friendlty from the standpoint of class certification,” he says. “Th e defendant will typically get (the case) settlef by the time it gets certified.”