Legal bout over utility poles pits DEMCO against Cox

Two of the Capital Region’s biggest utility providers are embroiled in a $4.9 million federal courtroom drama over wood poles. DEMCO alleges in a breach-of-contract lawsuit that Cox Communications intentionally attached its cables to the electric cooperative’s utility poles without permission to avoid paying a $10-per-pole rental fee. But Cox says the lawsuit was filed as a “Hail Mary pass” in response to a complaint the telecommunications provider filed with the Louisiana Public Service Commission in April 2012, alleging it was suffering “pole-related abuses” at the hands of DEMCO. In court filings, DEMCO alleges a 2011 audit discovered Cox had attached to 34,093 DEMCO utility poles—7,537 more than it was reporting and paying to rent. DEMCO also alleges Cox failed to pay its share of trimming and maintenance of the utility poles, and neglected to furnish an adequate corporate surety bond. “Cox’s violations are not mere technical breaches of national and contractual safety requirements,” DEMCO’s attorneys write. “They pose a real safety risk to pole utility workers and the public at large.” But in its LPSC complaint and in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Cox attorneys complain of a “secretive and one-sided” artificially inflated attachment count, demands for excessive back rent and penalties, repeated attempts by DEMCO to increase Cox’s pole-attachment rent, and a “mysterious and self-serving safety audit” designed to shift plant remediation costs to Cox that the company believes should be borne by DEMCO. The attorneys characterize DEMCO’s lawsuit as an “ill-founded and ill-formed defensive gambit” to avoid the LPSC’s jurisdiction and its statutes of limitation. — Penny Font