A federal court in Connecticut ruled that it can hear a 2004 inte...
A federal court in Connecticut ruled that it can hear a 2004 interconnection dispute between AT&T (formerly Southern New England Telephone) and competitive carrier Global NAPS without first having the dispute heard by Connecticut state regulators, because Global forfeited…
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its opportunity to have the quarrel referred to the state commission. U.S. District Judge Janet Hall in New Haven said (Case 3:04-CV-2075 JCH) federal courts usually grant a party’s request to defer hearing interconnection disputes until state administrative remedies have been exhausted, but “there is no language in [the federal Telecom Act] that expressly proscribes a district court from hearing a dispute concerning an interconnection agreement.” She said the Telecom Act expressly allows federal court to step into interconnection disputes when a state has failed to act, but said the act is “somewhat silent” on whether a federal court can hear other interconnection disputes without first referring the parties to the state commission. She said Global should have raised the issue of state regulators’ primary jurisdiction over this quarrel early in the proceeding, instead of waiting three years to bring it up. She cited federal appeals court rulings that failure to exhaust state administrative remedies doesn’t automatically block federal litigation. She said Global’s failure early on to seek a referral to the state commission amounted to tacit acceptance that the federal court was the appropriate place to hear the dispute.