A federal appeals court has affirmed a judge’s decision to certify a class-action lawsuit against Comcast in an eight-year-old case over whether the cable TV giant violated antitrust law by engaging in anticompetitive behavior in Chicago and Philadelphia.
The ruling by the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit enables the plaintiffs to continue their class-action suit against Comcast, the largest U.S. cable TV operator, based in Philadelphia.
The plaintiffs claim, in part, that Comcast, through a series of acquisitions and swapping of systems beginning in 1998, engaged in anticompetitive behavior that enabled it to control the majority of the “Philadelphia Designated Market Area" – generally resulting in higher prices for non-basic video programming subscribers. The suit filed in 2003 claims Comcast has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Four years ago, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania certified the claims of the Chicago and Philadelphia classes. But following an important Third Circuit ruling outlining the standards a district court should apply in deciding whether to certify a class, the court revisited its Philadelphia certification decision at Comcast’s request and held a four-day evidentiary hearing on whether the plaintiffs could meet the standards outlined in the 2008 case, In re Hydrogen Peroxide Antitrust Litigation.
Early this year, after analyzing the evidence at the hearing in an 81-page memorandum opinion, the District Court recertified the Philadelphia class. Comcast appealed, alleging that the court exceeded its discretion and made clearly erroneous findings of fact.
In an exhaustingly detailed opinion released Aug. 23, the Third Circuit upheld the lower court decision.
“At bottom, Comcast misconstrues our role at this stage of the litigation," Senior Circuit Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert wrote in the decision. “Comcast would have us decide on the merits whether there was actual or potential competition among the Transaction parties, the reason RCN Telecom Services, Inc., abandoned the Philadelphia market, and whether Plaintiffs’ experts proved antitrust impact. We are not the jury."
The bad news for the plaintiffs, however, is that the case is still probably a long way off from being heard by a jury.
One of the three judges on the panel, Kent A. Jordan, partly disagreed with the majority opinion.
