LANSING ? AT&T Michigan has been ordered by an Ingham County Circuit Court judge to pay ACD Telecom $7,994.590 for breach of contract.

From January 2003 to December 2003 AT&T offered to enter into a “Mutual Waiver Agreement,” or MWA, with Michigan CLECs. Under the MWA, the parties agreed that they would not charge termination charges when the one company won over contract customers in term contracts from the other company. The MWA was a one page contract. Under the MWA, customers who were “end users” of “local exchange service” were covered by the agreement.

ACD entered into an MWA with AT&T on April 13, 2003. ACD primarily targeted Internet service providers who were using a product called ISDN Prime to obtain local telephone service for dial-up Internet customers. ISDN Prime is a digital product consisting of 24 channels. One of these channels is used as a control circuit while the remaining channels are used for traffic.

Absolute Internet and ARQ Internet were two customers that switched from AT&T to ACD under the MWA. However, AT&T refused to honor these two switches and ACD ceased its marketing efforts under the MWA.

ACD and several other plaintiffs filed suit against AT&T in Ingham County Circuit Court in 2004, alleging breach of the MWA. In 2006 the circuit court granted AT&T summary disposition and ACD’s claims were dismissed. AT&T settled with other parties and ACD was the only plaintiff that appealed the summary disposition order.

The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the MWA was ambiguous, and that what constituted either an “end user” or “local exchange service” was an issue of fact for the jury to decide. The case was therefore remanded for trial.

Trial began on September 29, 2009 and concluded with a jury verdict on October 15, 2009. At trial ACD presented testimony of eleven witnesses. These included expert Joseph Gillan who testified that ISDN Prime was recognized throughout the industry to be local exchange service and that ISPs were treated as end users under the law and in the industry.

AT&T spokesperson Amy Grundman said: “We are disappointed by, and disagree with, the conclusions of the jury and are considering all options.”

a>>