Fake Ringtone Plaintiffs Press Their Case for Special Master for Discovery

Plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone in the fake ringstones case against defendant T-Mobile continue to support the court’s appointment of a special master to oversee discovery, despite T-Mobile’s opposition (see 2303090056), said their reply brief Monday (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

The court already recognized the case involves complicated issues, but T-Mobile “argues the exact opposite,” said the reply: “Nothing could be further from the truth because this case is anything but simple.”

The case “at its core” arises out of T-Mobile’s "illegal use" of fake ringtones, said the reply. The conduct “either caused calls not to complete or masked failures” by former defendant Inteliquent, or T-Mobile’s other intermediate exchange carriers, to complete calls placed to rural and high-cost destinations, it said. All that conduct violates the Telecommunications Act, it said.

The evidence necessary to prove T-Mobile’s “knowing violation” of the statute and “the financial impact it caused to a nation-wide class of local carriers, is extremely complex,” said the reply. It will involve “expert analysis of billions of calls,” it said. Each call will contain “several data points that require their own analysis to ascertain which, and how many calls were impacted by T-Mobile’s illegal practices,” it said.

Even with the court’s dismissal last month of Inteliquent, absolving the former defendant of the one remaining civil conspiracy count against it (see 2302100007), extensive fact and expert discovery “remains between the parties,” said the reply. T-Mobile and the plaintiffs have issued subpoenas to Inteliquent for its call detail records because T-Mobile didn't preserve its own CDRs, it said. Numerous outstanding and “anticipated disputes” between the plaintiffs and T-Mobile, and between the plaintiffs and Inteliquent, “remain unresolved,” it said.

The parties’ recent joint status report “demonstrates that T-Mobile itself intends to engage in discovery motion practice,” said the reply. A special master “would aid in addressing these issues without overburdening the Court and facilitate a timely and efficient resolution of discovery,” it said.

T-Mobile provided “no authority to support the proposition that a timely request for documents should be disregarded,” said the reply. “T-Mobile does not make these arguments with clean hands since its failure to preserve its CDRs is the cause for having to chase down Inteliquent’s CDRs, which Inteliquent has significant disincentives to produce,” it said.

Inteliquent’s “unilateral control” over CDR production “poses an ongoing impediment to completion of discovery,” said the reply. The process “would benefit” from a special master being available “to provide CDR production oversight,” it said. Once the CDRs are produced, “the case will only become more complex,” it said. CDRs “contain large amounts of data in numerous fields reflecting detailed information about each phone call carried over the network,” it said. The plaintiffs will need to “reverse engineer” from Inteliquent’s CDRs which calls were affected by fake ringtones, it said.