TRAC-Reports
Lawsuits Over Cable and Satellite TV Fees Have Dropped 42% This Year
(28 Sep 2016) The latest available data from the federal courts show that during August 2016 the government reported 65 new civil filings involving disputes over cable and satellite TV payments. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, there have only been 613 filings during the first 11 months of FY 2016, which if the same pace continues will top out at around 669 filings for the entire year.

The estimated FY 2016 total of 669 is well below the FY 2015 count when there were 1,158 such lawsuits and the figure for five years ago when there were 1,526. Thus the pace for 2016 filings is down 42.2 percent from last year and has dropped by 56.2 percent over the past five years.

Lawsuits involving cable and satellite TV payments often involve restaurant and bar owners sued for allegedly committing television signal piracy. Often these involve showing pay-per-view television programs such as sporting events in a commercial establishment without paying the commercial rate to show these programs.

Litigation of this type is not evenly spread across the country. The Southern District of Texas (Houston) leads the country with 101 out of the total of 613 suits filed nationally during the first eleven months of FY 2016. This means that about one out of every six suits in the country were filed in Texas South.

For the full report, including figures and rankings for the top ten federal districts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civil/440/

Each month, TRAC offers a report focused on one area of civil litigation in the U.S. district courts. In addition, subscribers to the TRACFed data service can generate custom reports by district, office, nature of suit or federal jurisdiction. To start, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/interpreter?tab=civil

If you want to be sure to receive notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

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TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

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