Baby Bells Open to Antitrust Lawsuits

jobugeek writes "A New York appeals court has opened up the abililty for consumers to sue the Baby Bells for antitrust violations. The question now is, will anyone try to."

Comments

Ummh yah

[red5]

The question now is, will anyone try to.

Uh yah,

What, you think the judge was bored one day and decided to open this up?
This decision is the fruit of legal action brought forth by the very people who will be suing.

Verizon, SBC, and others in trouble

[timothy_m_smith]

While ending AT&T's monopoly on phone service in the 80's has been great for the telecom industry, there is certainly a lot to be desired. What I'm wondering is if the ability to sue the Baby Bells will end up being a vehicle to change the fundamental way they operate or if it will just be a means for class-action lawyers to pad their pockets and their client's pockets.

If you look at a lot of the third party class-action antitrust suits coming against Microsoft right now, many of them are just after cash. If people sue the Baby Bell's for cash the only thing we will get are worse service and bankrupt phone companies...Can you imagine the service getting any worse?

Re:The Case Against Verizon

[Kamel Jockey]

At least for some people in Verizon's territory, there can be alternatives. If I wanted to, I could disconnect my landline phone, use Comcast for Internet access and get a cell phone from Cingular with good reception in my area. Hopefully as cable modems become more widespread, it may become more possible for (at least) residential customers who use dialup to dump Verizon for landline phones and use some kind of cellular alternative.

As I've said before, the only way Verizon is gonna improve service (and aside from their lack of DSL support, its pretty good), is if people start patronizing companies which can provide equivalent products and services.

Re:Triple Damages

[frank_adrian314159]

So, are these lawsuits meant as compensation to the consumer, a conduit for a lawyer's SUV fund, or as punishment to the defendant?

Yes...

In reality, it's supposed to be the first and last. However, even lawyers deserve to be paid something. So all you're doing is arguing over the fee.

On one hand, $5 IS significantly smaller than $150. On the other hand, without the lawyer and his quick thinking you would have had $0 and the company would have seen NO consequences. All-in-all, I'd say you got a pretty good payday for filling out a form and mailing it in.

They have nothing to fear

[Catbeller]

The Baby Bells have nothing to fear. As Microsoft has demonstrated, even the mightiest case (such as the Clinton DOJ had) can be reduced to nothing by delaying tactics and tons of cash.

And the current DOJ has a philosophical bent against antitrust laws. The top boys don't believe in those laws. And as the past year demonstrated, even with a case already won, they will let it peter out without comment. Oh, who are we kidding, it was Bush's decision.

There is no chance that the current DOJ will prosecute antitrust cases. They have other priorities, such as medical-marijuana laws and tapping the Internet. This is not a troll, simply the truth. The Bush admin will not fight monopolies because it doesn't believe they should be regulated.

And as for the courts, eventually the politically canny people in the White House will break the logjam on the hyperconservative, Chicago School federal judge appointments, and even if a future administration cares to pursue an antitrust case, it will face a solid wall of Reagan/Bush/Bush II appointees who will shoot them down with glee.

As for greedy lawyers in private cases, I just don't get it. If the Feds can't or won't, and no private individual could possibly hope to confront billions of dollars worth of legal opposition, what other possibility for redress of monopolistic practices would be left if the private lawyers weren't trying to profit from class action suits? If you hate lawyers more than the utterly powerful corporations (who are nothing more than lawyers themselves, don't forget!), then who the hell can stop the juggernaut? Let the lawyers make their millions if our executive, legislative, and judicial branches are philosophically incapable of doing their jobs to protect the citizens of the U.S. from out-of-control corporate lords.

Re:They have nothing to fear

[bnenning]

They have other priorities, such as medical-marijuana laws and tapping the Internet.

Who came up with the Clipper Chip and wanted to ban encryption technology? Who oversaw a record number of nonviolent drug users thrown in prison? Hint: not Republicans. Democrats are no better than the GOP when it comes to civil liberties.

Re:They have nothing to fear

[Catbeller]

Insightful my red baboon butt.

Proving Repubs evil was not my intent. In almost all ways, Clinton was the last great Republican president.

My intent in mentioning Bush and Ashcroft was not to fan "Democrats are evil" responses. It is to point out that this administration has rabidly gone after civil liberties and the press, based on its own ideology.

In Afganistan, reporters (well, one) were threatened with being shot if he went to investigate a bombing. Flat out. The hatred of the press is so great that Bush ordered no medevac of injured or dying reporters. In this "War", the reporters have died in their dozens, while we lost ... two soldiers? Leaving reporters to die, and remember, these are American citizens, can be chalked up to nothing more than a iron desire to control criticism and a scorching hatred of a free press. Bush does not like criticism. He also doesn't seem to like checks on his power. He, not Clinton, believes himself to be king.

As for Ashcroft, the man lost a Congressional race to a DEAD MAN. Let me repeat that -- in the conservative south, he lost to a d-e-a-d m-a-n because the voters thought he was a looney. He sponsored at least three new amendments to the Constitution, the contents of which escape me... point being, the man does NOT like the Constitution in its present form. And frankly, he's religiously nuts, hence his propensity for morality enforcement.

Do you think the Patriot Act, all those hundred and hundreds of lines, were actually written up in a week? Uh-uh. It was a wish list, by people who wanted a lot of control without liberal civil-liberty mumbo-jumbo to stop them. Bush/Ashcroft took advantage of our national grief to hammer through, without review, an enormously unnecessary and unconstitutional change to our nation. Remember, when they claimed that they needed all those spy powers to gather the information to stop future attacks, they were blocking investigations that would have uncovered the fact that not only was our intelligence capabilty sufficient under current laws, but that the attackers were fingered and alarms were ringing. No Patriot Act or unfettered Duce will help us if the idiots at the top are on vacation for a month when the alarms are ringing.

Do I think Gore would have done the same? No. Gore would not only have read reports, he was on the panel that warned attacks were coming. Gore would not have been on vacation for the month of August, and frankly, Gore reads more than three pages of information a day. His chances of noticing data and integrating it are far greater than a guy who wants to chat with his advisors and skim Presidential Cliff Notes.

I was never a Democrat, but I am forced to conclude that we have a nitwit, a power hungry political fratboy with a vicious temper, as an appointed president. Gore was an accomplished man, a scholar and a statesman. Bush is a privileged boob who fucked up 9/11 royally and had the balls to blame it on his predecessor. And then proceeded to use political capital to block investigation for over half a year -- upon which we learned the reason why.

Baby Bells and Microsoft

[jmcnamera]

Ok, since we are part of Slashdot we naturally compare this to Microsoft, but it's worse.

Almost everyone in the US pays for phone service. Strangly, I have more choice for my OS than I do for our phone service. Besides, many people still don't have computers, but they have phones.

I pay for an MS OS license via a PC seller once (if ever). Since they buy in volume, its maybe 30 bucks.

I pay more to my phone company each month.

So, to the question, will anyone bother to sue? I hope so.