Lawsuit halts WorldCom fiber buildout

WorldCom’s long-haul fiber expansion project in rural Indiana was halted yesterday after a state judge issued a temporary restraining order forcing the carrier to cease optical fiber installations on Hamilton County landowners’ property.

Four law firms have filed a class action suit against WorldCom, alleging the company is guilty of “willfully trespass” on landowners’ property in Indiana. WorldCom is laying fiber along former railroad rights of way in Indiana. While WorldCom has received permission of the ROW’s owner CSX to install the cable, property owners maintain they own the land under the right of way, so burying lines constitutes trespassing. WorldCom officials could not be reached for comment today.

Property owners in other parts of the country have filed and won similar lawsuits against long-haul carriers using rail and utility rights of way, but this case is the first to spawn a restraining order against a carrier, said attorney Kathleen Kauffman, principal with the Ackerson Group, one of the firms suing WorldCom.

”We think this case is important, because it puts in stark relief just how blatantly a telecom company will knowingly ignore a landowner’s rights,” Kauffman said.

The lawsuit maintains WorldCom sought permission from city of Carmel to begin installation work but was told that only landowners could authorize work on ROW adjacent to their properties, Kauffman said. Instead of consulting the landowners, WorldCom simply began digging, she said.

“MCI’s behavior is outrageous,” Sallie Peeler, the property owner who initiated the class action, said in a statement issued by her law firm. “They never contacted me. I first saw the construction workers peering through the bushes at me and my children. When I saw the construction crew behind my house, I told them I owned that land [and] they had to get off. I read my deed to them. They still refused and kept on drilling.”

WorldCom is certainly not the first to face a class-action suit over right-of-way issues. Last summer, landowners in the 16 eastern states sued Thoroughbred Technology and Telecommunications, or T-Cubed, a company that controlled conduits and fiber along 2,750 miles of the Norfolk Southern raid ROW. The proposed settlement required an upfront payment of $6,000 per mile plus a percentage of T-Cubed’s revenue.

A nationwide class-action suit against AT&T has resulted in AT&T agreeing to pay as much as $45,000 per mile. As many as 36 other lawsuits are pending against other companies, including Qwest Communications, Level 3 and Sprint.