Supreme Court Won't Hear Oklahomans' Bribery Claims Against AT&T
The Supreme Court won’t hear an Oklahoma mayor’s complaint against AT&T involving alleged bribery at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and a state court. The Supreme Court denied certiorari Monday on the petition by Nichols Hill Mayor Sody Clements -- a…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
former OCC employee -- and other Oklahomans against Southwestern Bell, now known as AT&T. In 2015, petitioners objected at the OCC to “intrinsic fraud” by AT&T “to obtain ill-begotten orders and judgments from the OCC and the Oklahoma Supreme Court,” the petition said. The OCC dismissed that complaint with prejudice, preventing petitioners from seeking further review. In its application for cert, petitioners said the commission and state court “simply went too far in resolving this grievance -- by abridging the Petitioners’ United States Constitutional right to further petition for redress of grievances by the State’s summary dismissal ‘with prejudice’ of Petitioners’ application to reform a bribed legislative matter.” The petitioners are disappointed, but this request was “one tiny part” of the matter, Clements said in an interview. “We are not going away.” The case has never been heard on the merits but instead “shuttled” from one court to another due to technicalities, and AT&T has yet to deny the bribery charges, she said. AT&T applauded the rejection. “At least seven times over the last 25 years, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and the Oklahoma Supreme Court have consistently found no compelling basis -- legal or otherwise -- to reopen this case,” a spokeswoman said. “After the truly remarkable amount of consideration and review this issue has received, it’s time to put it to rest.”