Charter Communications found negligent in customer’s murder
STAMFORD — A jury in Texas has found that Spectrum services provider Charter Communications acted negligently in connection with a field technician’s fatal stabbing of an 83-yearold Dallas-area customer in 2019 and ordered the company to pay several hundred million dollars in damages.
In its verdict Thursday, the jury directed Charter to pay 90 percent of $375 million in compensatory damages to the family of Betty Thomas. The total could increase, with the jury set to consider punitive damages on Monday.
“Over 11 days of trial ... testimony revealed systemic failures of the company’s pre-employee screening, hiring and supervision practices, as well as failures to address known warning signs and control the offduty use of company vehicles — all of which led to the preventable murder of Betty Thomas of Irving,” attorneys for Thomas’ family said in a news release after the verdict was announced.
Charter said it would appeal the decision. It has not questioned the guilt of the technician, 45-year-old Roy Holden — who pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced last year to life in prison — but it disputed Thomas family’s attorneys’ assertion that her death was preventable.
“Our hearts go out to Mrs. Thomas’ family in the wake of this senseless and tragic crime,” the statement said. “The responsibility for this horrible act rests solely with Mr. Holden, and we are grateful he is in prison for life. While we respect the jury and the justice system, we strongly disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal.”
Robert Bird, a University of Connecticut professor of business law, said in an email that “the compensatory damages verdict is quite high, and punitive damages can make the cost to (Charter) Spectrum even greater. An appellate court may reduce the size of a large verdict if it determines those damages to be excessive.”
Holden performed a service call in Thomas’ home the day before the
December 2019 murder, according to Thomas’ family’s attorneys. They said in the news release that Holden was off-duty the following day, but he still learned that Thomas had reported that she was continuing to have problems with her service. They said he used his company key card to enter a Charter-secured vehicle lot and drove his Spectrum van to her house. After he entered, he stabbed her with a Spectrum-supplied knife and “went on a spending spree with her credit cards,” they also said.
When Charter acquired Time Warner in 2016, it “inexplicably ended its pre-employment screening program” and Holden was hired “even though a cursory review of his previous employers would have revealed firings for forgery, falsifying documents and harassment of fellow employees,” Thomas’ family’s attorneys said in the news release.
The company’s conduct was “unusually lax, and allegations that the company was not cooperative with police likely only made matters worse for Spectrum in the eyes of the jury,” Bird said.
Charter denied that it had not screened Holden and said that Texas law and the trial evidence had shown that the murder was “not foreseeable.”
“At Charter, we are committed to the safety of all our customers and took the necessary steps, including a thorough pre-employment criminal background check — which showed no arrests, convictions or other criminal behavior,” the company added in its statement. “Nor did anything in Mr. Holden’s performance after he was hired suggest he was capable of the crime he committed, including more than 1,000 completed service calls with zero customer complaints about his behavior.”
In the days before Thomas’ murder, Holden made “outcries” to supervisors about personal and financial issues related to a divorce that left him without money or a place to stay, and he cried in a meeting with his supervisor during which he said he was “not OK,” according to Thomas family’s attorneys. They
said that immediately after being denied money, he began scamming elderly female Spectrum cable customers by stealing their credit cards and checks.
They also asserted in the news release that he had “completely unauthorized access” to his Spectrum van and that in the weeks before the murder had likely been sleeping in the van.
Thomas’ family later received a bill that included a $58 charge for Holden’s service call, and “the bills continued to come and eventually were sent to a collection agency,” the family’s attorneys added in the news release.
Through its Spectrumbranded internet, cable and phone services, Charter serves about 32 million customers across 41 states. It employs more than 93,000 people, with most of them in customer-facing positions that include field technicians and call-center workers.
Ranking No. 69 on this year’s Fortune 500 list, Charter’s main offices are housed in a new, purposebuilt complex at 400 Washington Blvd., next to the downtown Stamford MetroNorth Railroad station.