Comcast Accused Of Retribution Against Small Rival

(RTTNews) - A local cable and broadband provider in Texas has filed a lawsuit against Comcast Corp. (CMCSK, CMCSA), alleging that the cable giant and its contractors drove it out of business by severing its business cable lines after it rejected Comcast's buyout offer.

The lawsuit was filed last week in Harris County, Texas, court by Anthony Luna, owner of Telecom Cable LLC.

According to the lawsuit, Comcast approached Luna in 2013 and offered to buy out Telecom Cable's Weston Lakes operation, where Luna had been doing business since 2007.

Luna declined the offer as "Comcast was not willing to pay what Telecom Cable's operations were worth" and Comcast walked away. But Comcast later returned and started to install its own cable infrastructure in areas where Telecom's cables were already in place.

In order to prevent its underground cables from being accidentally damaged by Comcast or its contractors, Telecom Cable said it marked its underground cables with "buried cable" flags and spray paint. Luna also said he sent a map of Telecom Cable's infrastructure to Comcast to prevent the cables from being damaged.

Soon after Comcast began its own installation, Luna received a report of service outage notices. When he arrived to check out the site, he found his underground cables had been cut.

Despite repairing the damage and restoring service, Telecom Cable later found that three more of its lines were severed by Comcast's contractors. Telecom Cable was unable to repair the damaged cables as fast as the defendants destroyed them.

After a six-week battle, Telecom Cable was effectively out of business as most of its customers in Weston Lakes deserted it for Comcast. Luna and his family then moved from Texas to New York, where Luna and his wife took lower-paying jobs.

Telecom Cable is seeking more than $1 million in damages and also believes it is entitled to all profits Comcast received from the customers the cable giant gained following the alleged violations.