A dial-in mediation conference in AT&T's challenge of Los Altos, California’s denial of 12 small-cell applications is set for Friday at 2 p.m. PST, said an order Monday (docket 22-16432) from the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. AT&T appealed the case to the 9th Circuit from the U.S. District Court for Northern California (see 2212060051).

San Diego Gas & Electric sustained nearly $66,000 in damages in December 2019 to an underground primary electric cable at a site in Chula Vista, Calif., from excavation work that was performed “negligently, carelessly and recklessly” by defendants Crown Castle and Kleven Construction, alleged the utility in a Dec. 7 complaint (docket 37-2022-00049007) in California Superior Court in San Diego County. The utility immediately billed the defendants for the damages, but they “failed and continue to fail to pay the sum due,” said the complaint. Crown Castle and Kleven ignored the utility’s surface markings to indicate the approximate location of the cable, and flouted Section 4216 of the California code that required them to excavate the site with caution, using only hand tools, to determine the exact location of the “subsurface installation,” instead performing excavation work “outside of the delineated area,” it said. The defendants “acted willfully and maliciously and in conscious disregard of the rights and safety of others by excavating with power equipment” adjacent to, above or near to a known active power cable, it alleged. Crown Castle declined comment Monday. Kleven didn’t comment.

Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth Gesner for Maryland signed an order Friday (docket 1:22-cv-02497) scheduling a Feb. 7 remote settlement conference in Crown Castle’s infrastructure complaint against contractor Black Electric. She instructed each party to submit by Jan. 24 a short ex parte letter “candidly setting forth” the facts each side believes can be proved at trial, plus the history of settlement negotiations in the case. Gesner also directed both sides to exchange written settlement demands and responses beginning at least a month before the Feb. 7 conference. Crown Castle and Black Electric are “engaged in discussions” to resolve their legal fight or at least “narrow the issues in dispute,” they told the court Dec. 5 in a joint status report (see 2212060003). Crown Castle alleges Black Electric’s workers damaged a conduit holding telecommunications fiber that Crown Castle installed along Maryland's Hatem Bridge spanning the Susquehanna River, but Black Electric denies culpability and seeks to dismiss the complaint.

Tuesday’s videoconference on AT&T’s proposed settlement with the town of Heath, Massachusetts, over the installation of a cell tower (see 2212060027) is unusual for the specificity of detail disclosed in the settlement agreement. AT&T’s October 2021 complaint arose out of Heath’s denial of AT&T’s application for a special permit and zoning relief for construction of its wireless facility. The parties reached a settlement nearly a year ago, but the court rejected it, saying AT&T and Heath failed to provide the evidentiary basis on which to evaluate the merits of the resolution. The newest agreement, whose terms were disclosed in a Nov. 30 joint motion for judgment (docket 3:21-cv-30106), calls for the height of the proposed tower to be reduced by 60 feet to 120 feet, then immediately raised by 20 feet in compliance with the Spectrum Act and “associated” FCC regulations. Ten resident property owners, admitted to the case as intervenors, approved the “one-time height extension,” said the document. Under the proposed settlement, AT&T will make tower space available free of charge to Heath’s public safety agencies, situating that space to avoid interfering with AT&T’s space on the tower and “colocation space for other FCC-licensed carriers,” it said. AT&T agreed to reimburse the town for “its actual and reasonable” consultant fees, to a maximum of $2,500, said the proposed agreement. AT&T also agreed to install “sound attenuating material” at the tower site, and to paint the tower, antennas and other attached equipment brown, it said.

Plaintiffs Sunesys, Crown Castle and NewPath Networks joined with the defendant county of Riverside, California, in asking the California Superior Court to stay their litigation in a property tax dispute until the constitutionality of “disparate” tax rates between state and county assessments can be decided in the California Court of Appeal in Santa Clara County, said their stipulation Thursday (docket CVRI2204040). Sunesys, Crown Castle and NewPath sued the tax collectors in Riverside County Sept. 16, seeking tax refunds for 2017 and 2018, asserting they would have had to pay tens of thousands less in taxes on the property they lease or own in the county had they been assessed the county tax rate instead of the state’s. “This case presents a challenge to whether the statute setting the formula for calculating the tax rate on state-assessed property is consistent with article XIII, section 19 of the California Constitution,” the same issue that's at play in the Santa Clara court involving an AT&T challenge, said the stipulation. The parties agree to jointly request a termination of the stay within 45 days after the appeals court in Santa Clara issues its decision, it said.

Defendants Rosciti Construction and Hub Fiber Loop removed a state-court complaint Friday to U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston (docket 1:22-cv-12089) in a breach of contract dispute with In Spite Telecom. Plaintiff In Spite alleges the defendants inappropriately withheld payment of $200,000. Spite’s complaint said Rosciti agreed to pay $300,000 for consultation services at the completion of a project involving a telecommunications conduit and installation of fiber lines in the Boston area around March 2017. After the project ended in July 2021, the companies agreed in September 2021 to reduce the plaintiff’s payment to $200,000, the complaint said. Rosciti failed to make the payment, it said.

The U.S. District Court for Southern New York referred T-Mobile's wireless infrastructure dispute with three Bronx building landlords to the court’s “annexed” mediation program, said an order signed Wednesday (docket 1:22-cv-08369) by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cott. The landlords of rooftop space T-Mobile leases rebuffed the company's demand that they sign the New York Fire Department paperwork required for the carrier to access those rooftops and upgrade its wireless antenna facilities (see 2210270004).

American Tower subsidiary Global Tower Holdings served notice Tuesday on the U.S. District Court for Maryland that it plans to file a motion to dismiss the amended complaint of property owner Olcan III Properties in a rooftop cell tower dispute, said a scheduling order Wednesday (docket 1:22-cv-02456) signed by U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby. “In light of the foregoing,” said Griggsby’s order, Global Tower’s motion to dismiss will be due Feb. 1, with Olcan’s response due March 1. Global Tower’s reply will be due March 15, it said. Global Tower’s use of an easement to access the tower on the rooftop of a building that Olcan owns caused Olcan “to incur repair costs and to lose rents and profits,” said the amended complaint (see 2211140050). It seeks $75,000 in damages for breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and public nuisance.

Plaintiff AT&T and defendant Lane County, Oregon, propose that fact discovery be completed by April 1, and dispositive motions be filed by June 1, they said Tuesday in a joint Rule 26(f) report (docket 6:22-cv-1635) in U.S. District Court for Oregon in Eugene. AT&T alleges it has been trying for more than a year to place a 150-foot-tall cell tower on a five-acre parcel of land in western Oregon to improve local wireless services, but the county denied approval of the proposed facility in violation of the Telecommunications Act (see 2210260009). The county responded by saying AT&T failed to exhaust its “administrative remedies” under local Oregon law (see 2211180029). AT&T and the county agree the lawsuit “likely will be suitable for resolution on summary judgment and, if not, that a summary judgment ruling may significantly affect the scope of any issues to be tried,” said the Rule 26(f) report. They asked that any further dates on the calendar be set after the court’s ruling on their anticipated summary judgment motions.

Contractor R&Y Underground negligently caused more than $71,000 in “actual damages” to a Crown Castle cable when excavating with “mechanized equipment” at an intersection in Miramar, Florida, alleged Crown Castle in a Nov. 29 complaint (docket CACE-22-017496) in the 17th Judicial Circuit Court in Broward County. R&Y failed to excavate “in a careful and prudent manner based on accepted engineering and construction practices,” said the complaint. It also failed to take “adequate measures” to protect the cable, it said. R&Y didn’t respond to requests for comment.