Plaintiffs' Reply to Support Pretrial Master Has 'Misleading' Assertions: T-Mobile

T-Mobile’s Tuesday sur-reply to plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone’s reply in support of their motion for appointment of a pretrial master for discovery was necessary to address “numerous new misleading (if not false) assertions and new arguments,” said the filing (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

The case arises out of T-Mobile’s "illegal use" of fake ringtones, said plaintiffs’ March reply brief in support of the court’s appointment of a special master. The conduct allegedly “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, in violation of the Telecommunications Act.

Plaintiffs’ new argument in the false ring tones case that they had to overcome numerous discovery objections and do a records custodian deposition before issuing document requests for call data records (CDRs) is “false and nonsensical,” said T-Mobile’s sur-reply. Plaintiffs originally claimed the exploration of damages would require CDRs, but after discovery opened in February 2021, they didn’t ask for CDRs, claiming they needed records custodian depositions before they could formulate CDR requests, said the filing. There was no special information they needed to obtain through records custodian depositions before they could ask for CDRs, T-Mobile claimed, saying plaintiffs “opted to overcomplicate” the case.

Plaintiffs mischaracterized the timing and details of negotiations on production of CDRs, “wrongly suggesting” Inteliquent was “uncooperative,” said the sur-reply. Their argument that Inteliquent’s control over production of its own records requires oversight “fails to explain what a special master could do” to accelerate the time Inteliquent needed to restore the parties’ 14 months of data, T-Mobile said.

Plaintiffs’ "new argument" that Inteliquent has “significant disincentives” to produce its CDRs because it will want to “hide its routing practices” from T-Mobile is “fanciful,” said the sur-reply. It contradicts their claims that T-Mobile conspired with Inteliquent to hide rural call completion issues and ignores that Inteliquent reported the call completion metrics at issue to T-Mobile five years ago, said the filing.

In addition, said the sur-reply, plaintiffs’ arguments about the complexity of CDR data and the further discovery that may follow CDR production are “speculative at best.” Their speculation that CDR analysis could lead to other downstream provider witnesses and identification of “thousands of potential class members” are offered “only for shock value,” T-Mobile said.

Plaintiffs’ argument that T-Mobile had a duty to maintain CDRs in connection with the FCC’s investigation into rural call completion “mischaracterizes the facts and is contrary to law,” said the sur-reply. Any duty to preserve records in connection with the FCC’s inquiry, “if one existed, was owed only to that agency.” Their accusation that T-Mobile’s Form 480 reports are “inaccurate” is misleading, the defendant said, saying errors were corrected and the reports were irrelevant to the need for a special master. “Plaintiffs’ reckless accusation of purported spoliation” is “seemingly intended only to malign” T-Mobile, it said.