A Texas jury has ordered Charter Communications to pay $7 billion in punitive damages to the family of an 83-year-old grandmother robbed and murdered by a cable repairman who arrived in the company’s van while he was not on time.
Charter, which owns Spectrum, was also found liable last month for $337.5 million in compensatory damages for the December 2019 murder of Betty Jo McClain Thomas.
Negligence cases like Thomas’s rarely go to trial and are usually settled out of court — and out of public view — without the company admitting wrongdoing. This is often true even when consumers have been assaulted, tortured, raped or murdered.
In a written statement this week from Charter spokesman Rich Ruggiero, the company said it would appeal the verdict: “Texas law and the facts presented at trial clearly show that this crime was not foreseeable – and the plaintiffs’ allegations of Charter’s wrongdoing are flatly false.
Roy James Holden pleaded guilty to murdering Thomas and was sentenced to life in prison. Lawyers for Thomas said Holden lied about his past employment and that Charter failed to verify his employment. If the company had done so and discovered the lie, he would have been disqualified from being hired.
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At Charter, court records show Holden racked up disciplinary action and took photos of driver’s licenses and credit cards at the homes of two elderly clients. He asked his operations manager for money and he sought mental health intervention through Charter’s Employee Assistance Program.
Yet he continued to be sent into the field. Holden was scheduled to work at Thomas on Dec. 11, 2019, at 1 p.m., according to the Irving Police Department incident report. He came back the next day and murdered her.
For Thomas’s family, this case was not about the money, said Chris Hamilton, the family’s attorney, of Hamilton Wingo LLP. This was to put the incident on the public record and ensure “it wasn’t a slap on the wrist where everything gets swept under the rug”.
During the trial, details emerged that shortly after Thomas’ murder, Charter sent an overdue invoice which included a $58.94 charge for Holden’s work. This invoice was forwarded to a collection agency.
In March 2021, Charter attempted to force the family into arbitration, submitting court documents showing that Thomas had agreed to the company’s terms of service, which included an arbitration agreement, by checking a small box when she paid her bill online. The documents showed that she checked this box four times from August to November 2019. They also submitted a document that included Thomas’ signature on a work order for the December 11 repair, which also included an agreement to arbitration.
But that work order, which should have been signed when the job was done, was signed at 12:59 p.m., just a minute before Holden was due to start work. When Thomas’ family members saw the signature, they knew it didn’t belong to him, Hamilton said. It was simply signed “Bety”.
Thomas’ lawyers also contacted Thomas’ credit card company and discovered another anomaly: She paid her bill over the phone, not online.
“So we knew they weren’t telling the truth about it,” Hamilton said of Charter. The online Terms of Service documents were also copyrighted in 2021, two years after Thomas died.
Arbitration Damages, Hamilton said, would have been equivalent to Thomas’ final bill, approximately $200.
In his statement, Charter did not directly address the infringement allegations or whether there would be any policy changes related to background checks.
“We are committed to the safety of all of our clients and have taken necessary steps, including a thorough criminal background check prior to employment – which revealed no arrests, convictions or other criminal behavior,” he said. -he declares. “Furthermore, nothing in Mr. Holden’s performance after he was hired suggests that he was capable of the crime he committed, including over 1,000 service calls completed without any customer complaints about his behavior.”
Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria is the USA TODAY Investigative Team’s consumer watchdog. Send your advice to him at asandhulongoria@usatoday.com, @AmritpalKSL or on Signal at (434) 473-4073.