Money Spent on Video Franchising Suit Should Have Gone to New Ambulance: Yuma

in Phoenix. The court ordered the parties to file the renewed report after they said they couldn’t agree on the “substance and content” of their original joint status report (see 2303060038). Spectrum sued Yuma in June 2020 over the city's alleged refusal to comply with Arizona's universal video franchising law. Yuma’s counterclaims assert Spectrum’s lawsuit breached the indefeasible right of use agreement that Time Warner Cable, Spectrum’s predecessor company, signed with the city over use of Spectrum’s fiber capacity. The taxpayer dollars that Yuma spent on lawyers “more properly should have been spent on a new ambulance or police equipment” or maintaining the city’s fiber network for the next eight years, said the city in its portion of the renewed status report. The city has incurred more than $300,000 in actual damages “resulting directly from Spectrum’s improper actions,” it said. Yuma can’t and shouldn’t “place the burden of paying for such damages” on its taxpayers, it said. Spectrum was left “no choice but to initiate this litigation” after the city “refused to adopt any process for it to apply to obtain a uniform license,” countered the company in the joint status report. Yuma insisted the Arizona law “requiring it to adopt such processes and grant such licenses was unlawful,” it said. “Its contrary position now is flatly contradicted by the record evidence.” The city’s assertion that it was somehow forced into this litigation is “mistaken,” said Spectrum. The lawsuit “resulted directly from its own refusal to abide Arizona law,” it said. Yuma’s current litigation position “rings particularly hollow” now that the city seeks to keep the litigation going through a motion for summary judgment “after the core issue in dispute has been resolved,” it said. “That effort is misguided, and its strategy to do so through dispositive motions practice is procedurally improper, based on unfair and improper discovery practice,” it said.