Comcast violated Washington state’s Consumer Protection Act nearly 2 million times, alleged a lawsuit by Attorney General Bob Ferguson. Ferguson filed the suit Monday in King County Superior Court. Comcast allegedly misrepresented the scope of its service protection plan, charged customers improper service call fees, practiced improper credit screening and deceived customers with its company guarantee, the AG said in a Monday news release. Comcast allegedly misled 500,000 Washington consumers into paying $73 million in subscription fees over five years for a “near-worthless” protection plan, the AG said. The plan doesn’t cover repairs to any wiring inside a wall, which comprises “the vast majority of wiring inside homes,” it said. The suit seeks $73 million in restitution, plus about $1 million for improper service call charges and up to $2,000 per violation of the Consumer Protection Act. The AG also sought a court order requiring Comcast to remove improper credit checks from the credit reports of more than 6,000 customers and an injunction requiring the cable company to clearly disclose limitations of its protection plan in advertisements and through representatives, to stop improper charges and to implement a compliance procedure for improper credit checks. The AG's office informed Comcast of the issues more than a year ago, but the company didn’t start making changes until it was on “the verge of this litigation,” it said. “This case is a classic example of a big corporation deceiving its customers for financial gain,” Ferguson said. “I won’t allow Comcast to continue to put profits above customers -- and the law.” We “will vigorously defend ourselves,” a Comcast spokeswoman said. The protection plan at issue covers more than 99 percent of repair calls, she said. “We worked with the Attorney General’s office to address every issue they raised, and we made several improvements based on their input. Given that we were committed to continue working collaboratively with the Attorney General’s office, we’re surprised and disappointed that they have instead chosen litigation.”

CBS and some production companies are close to mediation talks with parking production attendants suing them for unpaid overtime wages. A memo endorsement (in Pacer) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said counsel for the two sides have been discussing potential resolution and are selecting a mediator for a proposed mediation in August; also in that filing, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe approved a Sept. 15 deadline for a joint status letter updating on where such mediation talks are. The attendants -- who are charged with securing lots and streets during productions being shot in the New York City area -- in their complaint (in Pacer) asked for unspecified lost compensation and damages. Named as plaintiffs in the suit were CBS TV Studios, CBS Broadcasting, Eye Productions and Possible Productions.

A pair of courtroom sketch artists dropped their copyright infringement claims against HBO and two documentary film companies, said a notice (in Pacer) of voluntary dismissal filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Terms of any settlement weren't made public. The mother-daughter team, Shirley and Andrea Shepard, sued HBO, Broad Street Review and Covert Productions in June for the documentary The Newburgh Sting, which allegedly incorporated four of the Shepards' sketches without license or permission. HBO bought the film -- which dealt with the arrest, trial and 2010 conviction of four terror suspects in Newburgh, New York, -- and began airing it in 2014, said the suit (in Pacer).

Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson and former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes are accusing one another of forum shopping in their fight over whether Carlson's sexual harassment claim against Ailes should be arbitrated or go to court. Carlson "is engaged in the ultimate forum shopping" by filing her sexual harassment claim in New Jersey state court, even though neither she nor Ailes lives there, and citing New York City law, while being required to bring claims to arbitration at the American Arbitration Association in New York City, Ailes said in a memorandum in opposition to Carlson's application for a temporary restraining order. Preliminary injunctive relief should be denied since Carlson can't demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm if she doesn't get injunctive relief, a balance of hardship tipped in her favor or that such an injunction is in the public interest, Ailes said in the filing (in Pacer) Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey. Carlson, in her application (in Pacer) for order to show cause filed earlier this month, asked the court to restrain Ailes from pursuing the petition under the Federal Arbitration Act he filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan (see 1607180019). In that application, Carlson said that Ailes waived venue issues in his motion to compel arbitration when he omitted any claim the venue was more properly New York than New Jersey and that his filing in New York "amounts to prohibited judge-shopping and forum shopping."

Expect continuing rate increases and broadcaster-led blackouts with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's decision earlier this month to end its consideration of changes to the totality of circumstances test in good faith negotiating, panelists said Tuesday at the Independent Show, co-hosted by the American Cable Association (ACA) and the National Cable Television Cooperative in Orlando. An ACA news release said Shentel Vice President-Industry Relations and Regulatory Chris Kyle said small multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) must begin educating consumers and regulators about broadcast stations' increase fee demands before next fall's round of retransmission consent negotiations. "There will be more blackouts," ACA President Matthew Polka said. "There will be more price gouging by broadcasters. Government will have no choice but to enter this discussion whether they like it or not and we're going to make sure that happens." MVPDs and allies expressed dismay when Wheeler said the agency wasn't making any retrans rule changes (see 1607140047).

NTCA is continuing its eighth-floor lobbying against the FCC's residential overbuild condition for New Charter. In an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 15-149, NTCA recapped a meeting between its CEO, Shirley Bloomfield, and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, at which the group repeated the case it made earlier this month in ex parte meetings with Commissioners Mike O’Rielly’s and Ajit Pai’s offices for reconsidering that broadband buildout requirement (see 1607080048). NTCA, the American Cable Association and Competitive Enterprise Institute have all petitioned the FCC to reconsider the overbuild conditions (see 1606100043).

Axis Insurance is responsible for defending and indemnifying Maryland's Ellicott City Cable in its legal fight against DirecTV, U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett of Baltimore ruled in a memorandum opinion (in Pacer) Friday. DirecTV sued Sky Cable, Ellicott and their owners in 2013, alleging DirecTV agent Sky Cable was fraudulently using the DirecTV Multiple Dwelling Unit Bulk Program to get discounted subscription rates for clients including Ellicott; that case settled in November 2015. After Ellicott notified Axis about the suit, the insurer denied coverage on the grounds the underlying action came from Ellicott's alleged intentional unauthorized use of DirecTV programming and is within the exclusions of the liability policies it issued, Bennett said. In the opinion, the judge dismissed a pair of arguments Axis made about those exclusions, denying an Axis motion for dismissal and granting an Ellicott cross-motion for partial summary judgment. Axis didn't comment Monday.

Viamedia's legal fight with Comcast is based on legally untenable theory -- that not dealing with a competitor is a violation of antitrust laws -- Comcast said Friday in a motion to dismiss in U.S. District Court in Chicago. Viamedia sued Comcast in May, alleging in its complaint (in Pacer) Comcast used its control of interconnects in certain Spot Cable Advertising Representation markets to elbow out ad services competition from Viamedia in such markets as Detroit and Chicago, while also using its interconnects control to lure away former Viamedia cable company clients such as RCN and WideOpenWest. Comcast in its motion (in Pacer) to dismiss said when its contract with Viamedia to support ad representative services in Chicago and Detroit expired in 2012, Comcast exercised its right to compete for cable companies' business in those markets. But Comcast said "it long has been settled that the antitrust laws do not compel a business to deal with its competitors," saying it and Viamedia "had an established pattern of competing, not cooperating, outside of Chicago and Detroit." Instead, it said, Viamedia is trying to use the court to put in place a perpetual contract, "but the antitrust laws require no such result, which would plainly reward complacency rather than industry." Viamedia didn't comment Monday.

Fox News Network has shown the "extraordinary circumstance" that would warrant more time to file a reply brief in its litigation against TVEyes, though if the court grants that extension, it should give TVEyes more time for its reply brief due Aug. 15 and for filing the deferred appendix, TVEyes said in opposition (in Pacer) filed Thursday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Fox in its motion (in Pacer) filed earlier this month sought to move the deadline for its reply in support of its cross-appeal from Aug. 29 to Sept. 15; in it, Fox cited the importance and complexity of the issues in the case, the interests of parity and the summer holiday season. With 13 amicus briefs having been filed in the appeal of a U.S. District Court decision that TVEyes' archiving function is fair use, but emailing, downloading and date/time searches aren't, and with a subsequent injunction (see 1606230036), Fox said, "the parties' appellate briefs are, and necessarily must be, lengthy and unusually meticulous as they parse nuanced issues of copyright law and the technology involved," thus requiring more time. TVEyes in its opposition said none of those cited issues is on par with the "extraordinary circumstances" spelled out in Local Rule 27.1(f). "Most cases to come before this court involve 'important' (and often 'complex') issues with fully developed records," TVEyes said.

The HTML5 101 document that NCTA and AT&T gave the FCC should help spell out why the pay-TV backed set-top box plan "offers a more productive path forward ... when it comes to competition, content diversity, copyright protection, and consumer welfare" than the NPRM before the agency, NCTA said in a blog post Friday. The apps proposal will obviate the need for set-tops, but "what it will not and should not do is to permit third parties to ignore copyright law and the decision of content creators as to how their content is packaged and presented to consumers," NCTA said. It also lashed out at unnamed critics as taking an "extreme position ... that the FCC must go further to 'unbundle the app.'" The HTML5 explainer -- posted Friday in docket 16-42 -- says what HTML5 is: the latest version of World Wide Web Consortium standards. Along with the 33-page primer, NCTA/AT&T provided an index of questions the FCC asked about the plan (see 1607110042 and 1607210044) and referred to various sections in the document that address them. For example, on the question of whether such HTML5 apps would be free and usable without additional multichannel video programming distributor-provided equipment, the index pointed to page 24 of the filing, where NCTA/AT&T said MVPDs "would license the HTML5 apps without charge to manufacturers of third-party navigation devices for their app stores, provided that the device manufactures and stores do not impose any fee or surcharge on MVPDs or consumers for providing or using the app or for transactions enabled through the MVPD service." On page 13, it said consumers would download the app from an app store associated with whatever device they're using and not require any new cable gateway device. Other questions in the index include whether the functions of an MVPD set-top and of the described app be identical and whether license terms will let a device's universal search include third-party apps on an equal and non-discriminatory basis alongside MVPDs' apps. The filing directly answers some questions, but other answers were left vague, such as whether all the content available via a set-top will be equally available to consumers in an app regime, Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer told us. The HTML5 approach still raises some concerns such as that such universal apps often are "lowest common denominator" and don't take advantage of the full functionality of devices, Bergmayer said. Meanwhile, pay-TV programmers continue to push back against the FCC's original set-top proposal. The plan "concerns programmers because of the lack of sufficient mechanisms to respect and enforce the myriad provisions of the contractual agreements between programmers and MVPDs," said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 16-42 on a meeting between programmers and FCC staff. Because of that contractual provision concern, the programmers said they "would continue to have concerns with any proposal (app-based or otherwise) that would not honor this threshold element." Meeting were Viacom Senior Vice President-Government Relations and Regulatory Counsel Keith Murphy, 21st Century Fox Senior Vice President Jared Sher, Time Warner Vice President-Public Policy Kyle Dixon, Disney Vice President-Government Relations Susan Fox, Scripps Networks Vice President-Legal and Government Affairs Kimberly Hulsey, CBS Senior Vice President-Regulatory Policy Anne Lucey and FCC staffers including Gigi Sohn, Louisa Terrell and Jessica Almond from Chairman Tom Wheeler's office.