Los Angeles sued Time Warner Cable for about...
Los Angeles sued Time Warner Cable for about $10 million in franchise fees allegedly owed to the city. The lawsuit claimed that while Time Warner Cable was withholding payments to the city, “it was raking in billions of dollars in…
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revenue,” said the office of city attorney Mike Feuer in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1gyH3gR). The city filed the complaint last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, it said. The city said the cable company violated the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act. DIVCA requires cable operators “to pay interest when franchise fees are determined to have been underpaid,” the complaint said. The operator allegedly has underpaid fees from 2008 through 2011. The city demanded that Time Warner Cable pay it $9.6 million, it said. The city also alleged that Time Warner Cable didn’t provide sufficient documentation “to support many of TWC’s own calculations of ‘gross revenues’ during the city auditor’s annual compliance examination,” it said. It’s possible that the cable company owes the city additional fees in both state franchise fees and fees for public, educational and government programming, it said. For 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, “TWC reported to the city one amount for gross revenues, but actually earned another,” the complaint said.