Charles Dolan, Cablevision CEO

Cablevision Systems Corp.’s board of directors have been sued by an investor for wrongfully approving “grossly excessive” compensation for Chairman Charles Dolan and members of his family who serve as executives at the fifth-largest U.S. cable company.

The board of Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision, which includes Dolan’s three daughters, approved more than $80 million in pay and benefits for the firm’s founder and his son over the last three years while the company piled up financial losses, according to the plaintiff’s suit.

Charles Dolan founded the cable company in 1973. Although others at the company have taken a larger role managing its day-to-day operations, Charles still won approval of $41 million in compensation for himself over a three-year period beginning in 2010. His son James was awarded $40 million, despite the fact he seems to be losing interest in Cablevision, preferring to devote more time to his rock band – JD & The Straight Shot – where he serves as lead singer, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiff alleges the compensation packages were excessive and a waste of corporate assets at a time when Wall Street analysts criticized the cable company for underperforming financially.

“The Dolans treat Cablevision as a family coffer, routinely entering transactions with the company that have improperly favored the Dolan family’s interests over the interests of the company and its public stockholders,” said shareholder Gary Livingston, who filed the suit.

What the Dolan family wants, they usually get. The family collectively hold shares that control about 73 percent of the company’s voting rights.

It isn’t the first time the Dolan family — now billionaires — have found themselves in court over compensation issues. In 2008, the company’s top executives agreed to pay more than $24 million to settle shareholder lawsuits accusing them of benefiting from stock option grants that were backdated.

Livingston’s case is an example of “baseless shareholder lawsuits designed simply to enrich the plaintiff and his lawyers,” Charles Schueler, a Cablevision spokesman, told Bloomberg News today in an e-mailed statement.

Here comes the taxman.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has won the right to continue the state’s lawsuit against Sprint-Nextel Corp., for allegedly underpaying millions of dollars in taxes. If the courts find Sprint fully liable, the company could owe New York up to $400 million in damages.

Schneiderman’s lawsuit claims Sprint has been illegally pro-rating state and local sales taxes on its service plans based on actual customer usage instead of the full amount of monthly access charges that New York law defines as taxable.

The lawsuit alleges Sprint has underpaid New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance at least $100 million since 2005.

Since 2002, New York Tax Law has required mobile phone companies to collect and pay sales taxes on the full amount of the monthly access charges for their calling plans. For example, when a customer pays Sprint a fixed monthly charge of $39.99 for 450 minutes of mobile calling time, the law requires Sprint to collect and pay sales taxes on the entire $39.99. According to the Attorney General’s complaint, starting in 2005, Sprint illegally failed to collect and pay New York sales taxes on an arbitrarily set portion of its revenue from these fixed monthly access charges.

Sprint’s scheme is ongoing, said Schneiderman. As a result, the state claims Sprint’s underpayment of New York sales taxes is growing by about a $210,000 a week, more than $30,000 a day.

The Attorney General’s lawsuit is the first ever tax enforcement action filed under the New York False Claims Act. The Act allows whistleblowers and prosecutors to take legal action against companies or individuals that defraud the government. Fraudsters found liable under the False Claims Act must pay triple damages, penalties and attorneys’ fees. Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers may be eligible to receive up to 25 percent of any money recovered by the government as a result of information they provide.

Sprint asked the court to dismiss Schneiderman’s lawsuit, but the New York Supreme Court ruled against the company on July 1. Sprint appealed the decision to the Appellate Division, which unanimously affirmed the July 1 ruling on Feb. 27.

A Utah federal district court judge has found Aereo in violation of federal copyright law and must end online streaming of over the air television stations to customers within his jurisdiction, which includes Utah, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Wyoming and Oklahoma.

U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball broke ranks with district court judges in the eastern U.S. that have ruled Aereo’s streamed feeds of local television stations received over the air by tiny antennas is within the law, but the Supreme Court is expected to have the last word when it hears arguments about the service’s legality later this spring.

The ruling means Aereo will have to suspend service in two of its 10 operating markets — Salt Lake City and Denver. Service to other markets will continue unaffected for now.

Kimball’s decision was based on The Copyright Act of 1976 which requires broadcasters and retransmission services to pay royalties to content originators, in this case the networks and the affiliated local stations involved. Broadcasters consider Aereo a major threat to their retransmission consent revenue stream. Cable, satellite, and telephone company providers are collectively paying millions for permission to carry local stations on their lineups. Should Aereo offer a free alternative, these pay television providers could adopt similar technology to avoid paying the fees.

Kimball determined Aereo was operating more like a cable company than a remote antenna service.

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit against AT&T accusing the company of suspending workers after they report workplace injuries.

The department filed the lawsuit against The Ohio Bell Telephone Company, which operates as AT&T, on behalf of 13 employees who were disciplined and suspended without pay from 2011-2013. The complaint alleges AT&T has repeatedly given one to three-day unpaid suspensions after workers reported injuries that occurred on the job. AT&T claims the workers violated the company’s workplace safety standards, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found AT&T only handed out unpaid suspensions after they formally reported the injuries.

Employers are prohibited from retaliating against employees who raise concerns or provide information to their employer or the government. Employees who believe they are a victim of retaliation for engaging in protected conduct may file a complaint with OSHA’s Directorate of Whistleblower Protection Programs.

“It is against the law for employers to discipline or suspend employees for reporting injuries,” said Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health. “AT&T must understand that by discouraging workers from reporting injuries, it increases the likelihood of more workers being injured in the future. The Labor Department will do everything in its power to prevent this type of retaliation.”

Five of the Ohio employees in the suit are based in Columbus; two in Brooklyn Heights; two in Canton; and one each in Akron, Cleveland, Gallipolis and Uhrichsville.

Among the suspension cases cited are these from 2012:

• An AT&T technician repairing a cable in Uhrichsville fell from a letter and suffered fractured vertebrae. He returned to work six months later. AT&T accused him of violating its ladder policy, put a written disciplinary warning in his employee record, and penalized him with a one-day unpaid suspension;
• An AT&T worker struggling to free a 28-foot extension ladder caught in foliage in North Canton pulled a muscle in his back and sought medical treatment and returned to work 10 days later. AT&T claimed  he violated its policy regarding ladders. The worker was issued a written disciplinary warning and assessed a one-day unpaid suspension;
• An AT&T technician in Lake Township stepped in a drain hole and injured his back while removing a 28-foot extension ladder from the top of his vehicle. He visited a doctor but missed no work time. AT&T again claimed the worker violated its ladder policy, issued the employee a written warning and placed him on unpaid suspension for one day.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.

More than two dozen NorthwesTel customers in Canada’s north are contemplating a class-action lawsuit against their Internet provider after being charged hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in overlimit charges for phantom traffic nobody can seem to identify.

Kyle Jennex of Whitehorse has always checked his usage, particularly because NorthwesTel charges very high prices for access and has a low usage cap. Running over a plan limit can prove costly at $5 per gigabyte. In November, Jennex discovered NorthwesTel’s usage meter was registering between 5-7GB of mysterious upload traffic every night even after the computer was physically disconnected from his Internet connection.

Despite complaining to NorthwesTel, the company billed him for nearly $1000 in overlimit fees, claiming he exceeded his allowance by nearly 200GB.

“I depend on the Internet for our lifestyle,” Jennex told Yukon News. “We like our music and our movies and our TV, so I download a lot of stuff. I also believe that if I’m paying for 150 gigabytes, I’m going to use that up. So because of that I monitor our usage carefully so I can spread it out throughout the month and to make sure we don’t go over.”

NorthwesTel has never suspected their meter of being responsible for the phantom usage measurements. To Curtis Shaw, NorthwesTel’s vice president of marketing, excess usage is entirely the customer’s responsibility. The company told Jennex his high usage was likely caused by torrent/peer-to-peer network traffic or a neighbor who had hacked into his password-protected Wi-Fi network. But neither explanation can account for usage that continued to rack up with nothing connected to his Internet modem.

Shaw recommends NorthwesTel customers shut down their computers when not in use, particularly overnight, to avoid excess charges. He also advises customers to change their passwords, regularly check usage, and install and update anti-virus software on their computers.

Bill Shock

Shaw also says users can sign up for e-mail that notifies customers when they approach their limit, “really to protect people from receiving a surprise bill.” He adds the company does monitor customer usage and has called customers in the past when their accounts show an unusual amount of activity.

But NorthwesTel didn’t bother to call a customer in Whitehorse who reports he was billed an extra $990 for the extra 198GB of usage he claims he never used. Nor did the company call the woman in the Northwest Territories bill shocked with $3,000 in overlimit fees in a single month.

The company says there have been repeated cases of neighbors “sharing” Wi-Fi connections which can quickly run up usage. But Jennex, who says he well understands the danger of unprotected Wi-Fi, believes he has taken the necessary precautions and has been overbilled anyway.

“The way they’re talking, it’s like every second neighbor is hacking into your wireless,” Jennex said. “I have passwords that are completely random that would take some pretty sophisticated equipment to hack into. We even tried disconnecting all our devices from the router and it still kept happening. The only way I could get them to stop was to physically unplug my modem.”

The company cannot or will not trace Jennex’s mysterious web traffic to identify the source, confident their meter is accurate. Besides, the company says, customers often underestimate the amount of traffic they consume using file sharing programs or watching video online. The company claims it worked hard on its usage meter and it received industry approval for its high degree of accuracy. But providers need not submit their meters for independent verification or subject them to periodic audits to verify meter accuracy.

NorthwesTel does not have a good record on meter accuracy. In 2010 the company was forced to admit it had overbilled hundreds of customers over a “meter glitch” when usage monitors were not reset. As a result, customers found enormous overlimit fees attached to their bills. In one example, a customer was charged a $2,500 overlimit fee on top of his usual bill of $88.

A glitch may indeed be part of the problem as one Yukon customer successfully confronted NorthwesTel for erroneous overlimit fees for consumption of data that was impossible to accrue at the speed of his Internet connection.

Angry customers complain that with so little competition, NorthwesTel has every incentive to play fast and loose with its meter, either because customers will cut their usage, upgrade to a higher cost tier with a bigger allowance, or pay the overlimit fees.

Customers who believe they were unjustly billed overlimit fees should take their case first to the Office of the President. Failing that, they should appeal to the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, an independent agency that has a good track record of winning relief.

Some customers fear the expensive overlimit fees so much, they are following NorthwesTel’s advice and keeping their computers switched off when not being used, but that isn’t a good enough answer for Jennex, who plans to continue the fight.

“There’s no need to rip us off because we live so far North,” he told CBC North.