The owner of a small business in Ipswich said AT&T Inc. won’t let him off the hook for a $1.15 million phone bill unless he drops his own lawsuit against the telecom giant for trying to force him to pay for international phone calls he didn’t make.
AT&T said in a statement on Monday that it would abandon its lawsuit against Michael Smith, president of Todd Tool & Abrasive Systems Inc. But Smith said AT&T would only halt its legal action if he agreed by Tuesday to drop his countersuit. “What the AT&T media statement said and what they told our attorney is not the same,” Smith said. “They’re willing to drop the claim if we drop ours.”
Comments
There are obviously more facts to this case than reported in this brief article. However, AT&T's lawsuit against Todd Tool sounds baseless and ridiculous. The telecommunications thieves did not steal from Michael Smith, they stole from AT&T by using Mr. Smith's international service. Where is the criminal prosecution component of this crime?
AT&T needs to fire the beancounters on its staff that spurred its lawyers into filing this idiotic law suit. A small company with an almost certainly provable average phone bill of under $1,000/month suddenly getting a one short-term period sequential hit of more than $800,000? And the AT&T beancounters found a couple of hundred thousand more dollars in interest? Too bad this tale about corporate moronicy didn't make the media a couple of years ago. You can be sure that the AT&T flackeroonies would have persuaded company lawyers to find a way to drop the beancounters' stupidly baseless goal of gaining credit for their pursuit of .... unjustified money.