AT&T doesn’t want the Michigan Pay Telephone Association to succeed...
AT&T doesn’t want the Michigan Pay Telephone Association to succeed in its petition for a declaratory ruling, an FCC filing said Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnm26t). Hank Kelly, general counsel of the MPTA, told us the petition “requests that the FCC find that…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
the Michigan Public Service Commission failed to properly apply the FCC’s New Services Test pricing standard in setting rates for services made available to payphone providers.” AT&T representatives met with FCC staff and “argued that the Commission should deny the MPTA’s petition and explained that, in all events, MPTA’s request for refunds was barred as a matter of black letter law by the filed rate doctrine and under the principles of res judicata and collateral estoppel.” Kelly told us he disagrees. AT&T’s contentions on filed rate doctrine and the principles of res judicata “do not apply in this instance,” he said. “The decision by the MPSC is inconsistent with and preempted by federal law, and the FCC is duty-bound by Section 276 to enforce its laws where the state public service commission failed to get it right.” He said MPTA will “be filing an updated set of information to respond directly to ATT’s most recent filings.”