Payphone Plaintiffs Seek to Stay Case vs. Verizon Pending FCC Review of Their Petition
Plaintiffs Best Payphones, Northeastern Telecom and Paramount Financial Recovery seek a stay in their case in which they allege Verizon and MelTel charged them unlawfully high payphone rates, pending the FCC’s resolution of the plaintiffs’ Oct. 17 petition before the…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
commission, said their motion Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-0493) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. The petition seeks a determination that between April 1997 and August 2006, Verizon and its predecessor companies were charging payphone rates that didn’t comply with FCC regulations, said their motion. All the claims asserted against Verizon in this case are based on Verizon charging the plaintiffs payphone rates that were higher than the compliant rate for the service in question, it said. The claim against MetTel is based on its rates being “contractually discounted from Verizon’s unlawfully high rates,” which resulted in MetTel rates being higher than they would have been had Verizon charged the proper compliant rate, it said. The FCC is “uniquely positioned” to determine what the compliant rate for payphone services should have been during the “damage period,” so it would be an “undue burden” on the court and the parties to continue this litigation “when the core issue to be determined is being addressed by the FCC,” it said. Verizon and MelTel moved Oct. 30 to dismiss the complaint, contending the plaintiffs have litigated their claims for 20 years, but repeatedly lost before state and federal agencies and in state and federal courts (see 2310310050).