Justia U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

CGM, a billing agent for competitive local exchange carriers (competitive LECs), brought a declaratory judgment action against BellSouth, an incumbent local exchange carrier (incumbent LEC). CGM claimed that BellSouth offered long-term promotional discounts to its own customers but failed, in violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 251(c)(2), 251(c)(4), and rules implementing it, to pass the full value of those discounts on to CGM's client competitive LECs, none of which was a party to the suit. Because CGM had no statutory standing under either the 1996 Act or a seemingly broadly worded but nonetheless inapplicable statute from the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. 401(b), the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of CGM's complaint. View "CGM, LLC v. BellSouth Telecommunication, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of five electronic communications offenses when she began an anonymous electronic campaign of harassment against a former romantic partner. Defendant challenged her convictions and sentence on numerous grounds. The court held that the felony convictions of Count 2 and Count 4 must be vacated and reduced to misdemeanors where both Counts created a merger problem which implicated double jeopardy principles and where the indictment failed to establish any crime in Count 4. The court also held that there was sufficient evidence to convict defendant on Count 1 and Count 6 where the record showed that she conspired unlawfully to access computers and electronic storage facilities containing unopened e-mails for the purpose of accessing other computers and harassing, annoying, and harming the victim and his family and where the illegal access to voicemail facilitated the harassing telephone calls by supplying the ammunition that made the calls harassing and threatening. The court rejected defendant's claim that her Sixth Amendment rights were violated where the district court granted her request to represent herself. The court further rejected defendant's remaining sentencing arguments and affirmed the judgment of the district court. Finally, in light of Count 2 and Count 4, the court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing.