CenturyLink Fiber Optic Cable Class Action Settlement Given Final Approval

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On June 25, final approval for a $4.8 million CenturyLink fiber-optic cable class action settlement was given by a New Mexico judge, resolving claims brought forth by state landowners that CenturyLink Inc. buried fiber-optic cables near on under their property on top of railroad rights of ways without landowner consent or compensation.

This CenturyLink class action settlement applies to 631 miles of railroad rights of ways in the state of New Mexico and will require the internet company to pay the majority of Class Members $0.75 per foot of right of way. If the landowner’s ancestors bought the land before the Federal Land Grant Act of 1875, which afforded companies the first railroad right of way, then CenturyLink may have to pay $1.25 per foot.

This fiber-optic cable class action settlement is one of 44 agreements that CenturyLink has finalized in about a dozen states across the country to resolve similar claims. According to U.S. District Court Judge Judith C. Herrera’s ruling on this CenturyLink class action lawsuit:

“All class members who did not opt out will release and convey an easement to each settling defendant who owns telecommunications facilities in a railroad right of way adjacent to the class member’s property. The easements grant the settling defendants, and their successors and assigns, a nonexclusive, perpetual easement in the right-of-way property for the presence of the fiber-optic cable and related equipment.”

Per the terms of this CenturyLink fiber-optic cable class action settlement, these easements will allow the internet company and the other named co-defendants Level 3 Communications LLC and WilTel Communications LLC to keep their fiber-optic cable systems in the railroad rights of way, as well as permit access and limiting rights within 10 feet of the fiber-optic cables. However, Judge Herrera states that the settlement will prevent the defendants from installing large structures on the rights of way.

According to Judge Herrera, just two months after she gave this CenturyLink class action settlement preliminary approval in November 2014, the claims administrator for this fiber-optic cable settlement mailed out notices to 5,662 Class Members who owned or had previously owned property along the railroad rights of way in question. It is estimated that 86.1 percent of the entire CenturyLink fiber-optic have been contacted and made aware about the settlement through the notices and other means.

Of all the Class Members contacted about the CenturyLink class action settlement, only five asked to be excluded from the settlement and one individual named James Ziegler objected to the fiber-optic class action settlement. However, Judge Herrera dismissed Ziegler’s argument that the Class of landowners were not given enough notice of the settlement and that the Class Representatives of being in league with CenturyLink.

This is just one of dozens of similar rights of way cases that other judges in other U.S. district courts have recently sign off on.

The plaintiff and the Class are represented by Eric E. Caugh and Daniel J. Millea of Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason LLP and John K. Silver of McClaugherty & Silver PC.

The CenturyLink Fiber-Optic Cable Class Action Lawsuit is Fager, et al. v. CenturyLink Communications LLC, et al., Case No. 1:14-cv-00870, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.