Court Clears Way for Mobile-Phone-Unlocking

F2504x4 · 12-05-07, 12:33 PM

Yea!!!!!! it about time....
Court Clears Way for Mobile-Phone-Unlocking Lawsuit Against T-Mobile

Quote:

Wireless-carrier T-Mobile USA lost a California Supreme Court bid Wednesday to kill a lawsuit challenging the company's early-termination fees and its practice of locking down phones to work only on T-Mobile's network.

Without comment, the high court's seven justices declined to review two lower-court decisions that allowed the lawsuit. The case could ultimately revamp the relationship between mobile-phone carriers and their customers.

Neither T-Mobile nor lawyers for aggrieved phone customers immediately returned messages to comment.

The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the challenge clears the way for a class-action lawsuit seeking a court injunction barring T-Mobile from collecting a termination-of-service fee of about $200. The company usually charges the fee when a contract is terminated early, no matter how close or far away from the contract's expiration date.

The plaintiffs also seek an order requiring T-Mobile to disclose the existence and effect of the software locks it places on the phones it sells, and to offer to unlock the handsets so consumers can switch to a different carrier without buying a new phone.

The practice of locking cell phones to a particular carrier is widespread. This week a California man sued Apple under the state's antitrust laws for locking the popular iPhone to AT&T's network.

If the T-Mobile lawsuit is successful, the outcome could require cell phone carriers, at least in California, to unlock cell phones upon a customer's request.

T-Mobile originally asked the lower courts to throw out the lawsuit, arguing its terms-of-service agreement requires aggrieved customers to submit to binding arbitration before a neutral mediator. T-Mobile said the service agreement also bars them from filing class-action lawsuits. But the plaintiffs argued it is in the public interest to use the courts, not mediators, because public-policy issues are at stake.

A state trial judge and a state appeals court rejected T-Mobile's position. The carrier appealed to California's highest court, which on Wednesday let those decisions stand.

In its August appeal to the Supreme Court, T-Mobile said its customers should honor the agreements they signed:"When the plaintiffs signed up for service with T-Mobile, they signed a written customer-service agreement that contained an arbitration clause."

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ronald Sabraw had ruled at the trial-court level that the case could go ahead, and a San Francisco-based appellate court affirmed that decision in June.

The appeals court also held that the prohibition on class-action lawsuits in T-Mobile's service agreement was unconscionable, and therefore "rendered the arbitration provision unenforceable."

The case is Gatton v. T-Mobile, S154947.

F2504x4 · 12-05-07, 12:43 PM

A little more info

Senator Amy Klobuchar