“When AT&T slowed down Matt Spaccarelli’s unlimited data plan on his iPhone, the unemployed truck driver from Simi Valley, Calif. took the country’s largest phone company to court. And as a surprise to all, he won,” Marguerite Reardon reports for CNET.
“But Spaccarelli’s victory rings hollow. In fact, the route he was forced to take — suing AT&T by himself as opposed to employing a more influential and wider ranging class-action lawsuit — illustrates just how difficult it is to change a carrier’s business practice through legal means,” Reardon reports. “Rather than big changes and a return of his unlimited high-speed access, he ended up with $850 and a lot of disappointment.”
Reardon reports, “Thanks to a Supreme Court decision in 2011, which upheld a company’s right to include a clause in contracts prohibiting subscribers from suing the company as part of a class action, Spaccarelli had only two options when fighting AT&T’s new policy: He could enter into an AT&T-funded arbitration program or file his suit in small claims court.”
Read more in the full article here.