DC Circuit to Hear CLEC Challenge to FCC Damages Award to AT&T March 31
A court set oral argument for March 31 on a challenge to a 2015 FCC order that awarded AT&T $252,496 in damages from All American Telephone, e-Pinnacle Communications and Chasecom in an access-charge payment dispute. The three-judge panel of the…
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is usually revealed 30 days before oral argument, said the order (in Pacer) Tuesday in All American Telephone Co., et al., v. FCC, No. 15-1354. The three companies said they terminated calls made by AT&T's customers for years but the telco refused to compensate them, leading to a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which asked the FCC to weigh in on the matter. The commission in a 2013 liability order found the three companies were "sham" CLECs, and it incorporated those findings into its August 2015 damages order. The three petitioners' brief (in Pacer) said the FCC damages order "contains purposely ambiguous language that makes it impossible to determine whether or not the Order exceeds the scope of the FCC's authority." The FCC/DOJ response brief said the petitioners hadn't challenged the FCC's determination they were sham CLECs involved in "traffic pumping" but were trying "to avoid the consequences of their unlawful activities." There's "no basis for petitioners' ambiguity argument," said the government brief, which argued it wasn't up to the D.C. Circuit to provide guidance to the district court about how to interpret the damages order.