Nov. 27, 2001 – A federal judge has ordered Virgin Islands Telephone Corp., which now does business as Innovative Telephone under the umbrella of Innovative Communication Corp., to pay nearly $3.9 million to AT&T of the Virgin Islands as partial resolution of a billing dispute.
District Judge Stephen Orlofsky, who was assigned to hear the lawsuit filed by AT&T in District Court earlier this year, ordered the payments in a ruling dated Nov. 21. He granted AT&T's request for a summary judgment in the matter covering the aspects of the lawsuit that had no factual dispute.
In his opinion outlining the reasons for his judgment, Orlofsky went through the history of the case: From January 1994 until January 2001, AT&T had a contract with Vitelco to provide long-distance service to Vitelco customers. Vitelco received payments from the customers, then made payments to AT&T for the long-distance charges, the judge noted.
In October and November of 2000, Vitelco did not make its monthly payments to AT&T to cover its customers' long-distance charges. Those two months of payments totaled about $3.5 million.
Vitelco officials at the time told AT&T that it was in the process of reviewing those bills for possible discrepancies, and later claimed that AT&T had overbilled Vitelco by about $914,000, the judge noted.
AT&T filed suit in January 2001 for payment of the two months of bills. In February, the telephone company filed a countersuit, claiming that AT&T had violated terms of an agreement the two sides had reached in connection with the outstanding debts. In May, AT&T asked the judge to give a summary judgment in the matter.
Noting that the telephone company had acknowledged its responsibility to pay the undisputed portion of the October and November bills, Orlofsky ordered the payment of the approximately $2.9 million undisputed amount, plus interest, bringing the payment to about $3.6 million.
The judge also ordered the telephone company to pay another undisputed bill of about $260,000 to AT&T, bringing the total to nearly $3.9 million.
The judge did not grant AT&T's request for a summary judgment in connection with those aspects of the bills that Vitelco has disputed. Those portions of the billing dispute remain as part of the lawsuit.
