Charter, Customers Dueling Over Class Certification in Snowstorm Refunds Suit

customers in Massachusetts suing the company over a 2011 snowstorm-related service interruption said in a reply memorandum (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Massachusetts. Charter, in a motion (in Pacer) filed this month opposing the plaintiffs seeking class certification, said the class-certification motion wrongly asserts Charter's storm restoration monitoring systems could compute automatic refunds for force majeure service interruptions, but Charter can't create records that quantify the length of time customers suffer cable TV outages. It also said the plaintiffs' motion that Charter doesn't adequately disclose its refund policy "ignores ... that few if any proposed class members were conceivably injured." Without any identified actual injury, no plaintiff is eligible to represent the proposed class in a refund policy disclosure claim, Charter said, saying the proposed class definition is "impermissibly overbroad" by also covering Internet and phone service outages. The company also said it regularly gives storm-related refunds on request, and any customer who got such a courtesy refund would need to be excluded. The plaintiffs, in their reply, said they were in fact injured by not getting the credits or refunds to which they were entitled. They also dismissed the "overbroad" argument and said any customers who already received refunds would represent, at most, de minimis numbers.