CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - An attorney for BellSouth has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit claiming the company owes millions in unpaid fees to ten 911 districts in Tennessee.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press (https://bit.ly/1xc7RO5) reports attorney Scott Angstreich last week asked U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier to rule against Hamilton County 911 and the nine other districts
The lawsuit claims BellSouth didn’t turn over 911 fees it owed the districts, intentionally lying to the emergency services providers to help its bottom line.
But Angstreich argued those claims aren’t true. Even if BellSouth didn’t pay the districts as much money as the law required, Angstreich told Collier the districts can’t prove the phone company did it on purpose.
“Nobody said BellSouth’s billing is perfect,” Angstreich said. “This is not about whether BellSouth’s billing was perfect.”
However, attorneys for the local 911 districts say BellSouth knew it was paying less money than it was supposed to, and they want Collier to bring the case to trial. If he does, they plan to ask the jury to make BellSouth pay three times as much as it owes the districts as a lesson for allegedly cheating the government.
“Your Honor,” attorney Tom Greenholtz said, “they should be stopped.”
The 911 fees at the center of the argument are included on customer phone bills. Citizens help fund local 911 centers by paying a $1.50 surcharge per month for residential phone lines and $3 per month for business lines.
Phone companies are supposed to collect the fee and give the money to the local 911 districts.
But in November 2011, Hamilton County 911 sued BellSouth, claiming the company wasn’t charging and collecting all the money it was supposed to. Within seven months, nine more Tennessee 911 districts jumped into the lawsuit, including those in Bradley and Coffee counties.
Attorneys for Hamilton County estimate BellSouth failed to collect somewhere between $4.5 million and $9 million over a decade.
In court filings, the county alleges that BellSouth stopped charging 911 fees around 1996, when the federal Telecommunications Act forced them to compete with other phone companies in the area. Not charging the fee gave BellSouth a competitive edge because it could charge lower prices, according to the county’s attorneys.
Collier didn’t say when he would rule.
These weren’t the first districts to file such a lawsuit against BellSouth. In 2009, the Madison County, Alabama. 911 district settled with BellSouth for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, the Davidson County 911 district settled for $1 million, and the Lincoln County 911 district settled for $13,000.
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Information from: Chattanooga Times Free Press, https://www.timesfreepress.com
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