Texas jury orders Charter to pay $7B
A jury in Texas has ordered Spectrum services provider Charter Communications to pay $7 billion in damages three years after one of its field technicians fatally stabbed an 83-year-old Dallas-area customer.
The order is one of the largest-ever judgments against a corporate defendant. The Stamford-based company said it will appeal.
The jury’s decision comes a few weeks after its initial ruling in the case, in which it found the company acted negligently in the death of Irving, Texas resident Betty Thomas and ordered the company to pay $375 million in compensatory damages.
“This was a shocking breach of faith by a company that sends workers inside millions of homes every year,” trial lawyer Chris Hamilton, of Dallasbased firm Hamilton Wingo, said in a written statement in a news release. “The jury in this case was thoughtful and attentive to the evidence. This verdict justly reflects the extensive evidence regarding the nature of the harm caused by Charter Spectrum’s gross negligence and reckless misconduct. For the safety of the American public, we can only hope that Charter Spectrum and its shareholders are listening.”
As it did when the compensatory damages were announced, Charter said Tuesday that it would appeal the jury’s decision. It has not questioned the guilt of the technician, Roy Holden — who pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced last year to life in prison — but it has disputed assertions by the Thomas family’s attorneys that it shared responsibility for her death.
“Our hearts go out to Mrs. Thomas’ family in the wake of this senseless and tragic crime,” the company said in its written statement. “The responsibility for this horrible act rests solely with Mr. Holden, who was not on duty, 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 will appeal.”
Holden performed a service call in Thomas’ home the day before the December 2019 murder, according to Thomas’ family’s attorneys. They said in their news release that while Charter said Holden was off-duty the following day, he still learned that Thomas had reported continuing 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.
At her house, Thomas
caught Holden stealing credit cards from her purse, according to her family’s attorneys. He then stabbed her with a company-supplied utility knife supplied and went on a “spending spree” with her credit cards, the attorneys said.
Trial testimony showed that Charter hired Holden without verifying his employment history, which would have revealed that he had lied about his work history, Thomas’ family’s attorneys said. In the weeks before the murder, supervisors ignored a number of “red flags,” including Holden’s written pleas to upper management for help because of his distress over
financial and family problems, they said.
The Thomas family’s attorneys also said in the news release that after the family filed a lawsuit, Charter used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into closed-door arbitration. In that scenario, the results would have been “secret” and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Thomas’ final bill, they said. The jury found that Charter committed forgery “beyond a reasonable doubt, conduct that constitutes a first-degree felony under Texas law,” they added.
Charter denied that it had not screened Holden
and said the plaintiffs’ claims of company wrongdoing were “categorically false.” It also said that Texas law and the trial evidence had shown that the murder was “not foreseeable.”
“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 statement added. “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.”
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 Metro-North Railroad station.