KENNEWICK — An appeals court judge from the Tri-Cities is suing Dish Network in federal court, launching a class-action lawsuit that claims the national satellite TV provider is deceptive in its pricing.
Judge George Fearing’s lawsuit also names two companies that work with Dish – Easy Connect, of Delaware and Kentucky, and Columbia Basin Satellite Company, headquartered in Kennewick.
The number of plaintiffs could climb into the hundreds, and damages being sought could total millions, according to court documents.
Two matters are at the heart of the lawsuit – that Dish Network and the other companies are “willfully operating a ‘bait and switch’ sales scheme” where actual services cost more than customers had originally been quoted, and that telephone conversations between consumers and employees are unlawfully recorded without consumers’ consent.
The recorded telephone calls are a violation of a consumer’s right to privacy and the state’s criminal code, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit asks that damages include three times the price difference between the cost of services quoted and the cost of services as presented in the in-person contract for each affected customer. Plaintiffs also are seeking $100 for each time phone conversations were improperly recorded by the defendants.
The lawsuit would cover Washington consumers who after Nov. 1, 2012, were quoted and agreed to pay a price for satellite television at the time the services were ordered that was lower than the price presented in a written contract at the time of installation.
Also included are Washington consumers who at any time after Nov. 1, 2012, had a telephone conversation with the defendants that was recorded without the consumer’s knowledge or consent.
“Our hope, and the reason you bring a class action, is you want to see them cease to behave in the way (that’s been) complained about,” said Richland attorney Douglas McKinley Jr., who is representing Fearing.
“There may be a huge number of people who have been harmed in a small way,” McKinley added.
Dish has faced similar lawsuits in recent years. In April, the state Attorney General’s office ordered Dish to refund about $2 million to Washington customers and provide additional benefits to consumers that could total $3 million, including a $10 credit, two free pay-per-view movies or two months of free access to the Epix movie channel.
The Attorney General’s office found that Dish had been charging its Washington customers an unlawful monthly line-item surcharge beginning in May 2012, netting the company more than $2 million. The state determined that “hundreds of thousands of Washington consumers were illegally charged a dollar per month for up to eight months.”
In July 2009, Dish Network was ordered to pay nearly $6 million across 46 states to settle allegations that it and third-party retailers engaged in deceptive and unfair sales practices. The company denied any wrongdoing, but agreed to terms that limited how it marketed services and to provide restitution or relief to eligible consumers.
The states had accused Dish of, among other things, making telemarketing calls in violation of Do Not Call Registry rules, representing to consumers that Dish isn’t responsible for the conduct of its third-party retailers and installers, failing to disclose all terms and conditions of its customer agreements and charging customer credit cards and debiting bank accounts without providing adequate notice and obtaining appropriate authorization.
“This is not the first time this has happened in the state of Washington,” McKinley said.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in December in Benton County Superior Court, but was moved to federal court after an attorney representing Dish Network filed a notice of removal last week.
The notice of removal hinges on three areas of the federal Class Action Fairness Act – that the punitive class has at least 100 members, that at least one member of the class could reside in a state different from the location of the defendant, and that the total damages in question exceeds $5 million.
Easy Connect schedules installations on behalf of Dish, and Columbia Basin Satellite installs the equipment. The suit includes an unnamed Easy Connect employee who took Fearing’s order over the phone and presumably knew the conversation was being recorded, according to the lawsuit. And it includes another unnamed employee at Easy Connect who recorded the conversation.
Conor Adriance is listed in court documents as the sales manager at Easy Connect who allegedly knew of conversations being recorded. And an unnamed worker with Columbia Basin Satellite allegedly knew the conversations were being recorded.
Eric Gillett of the Seattle law firm Preg, O’Donnell and Gillett is representing Dish Network. Easy Connect is represented by Cheryl Rani Guttenberg Adamson of the Kennewick law firm Rettig Osborne Forgette. Columbia Basin Satellite Company is represented by Eric Butterworth of the Butterworth Law Office in Kennewick.
Calls to Butterworth, Gillett and Adamson were not returned.
Anyone who wants to join the class-action case can call McKinley at or visit dougmckinleylaw.com.
