Cable companies owe you a duty of care when repairing, installing, or maintaining their systems. But if recent lawsuits are anything to go by, some of these companies simply do not care about their clients. Over the past few years, some popular cable giants, including Comcast, have made headlines for their negligence, leading to various accidents, such as slips and falls.
Perhaps one story that dominated headlines in the summer of 2022 is the $7 billion settlement awarded to the family of Betty Thomas, an 83-year-old grandmother who had been brutally stabbed and killed in her home by a Spectrum employee. Although the incident occurred in 2019, the jury finally reached a decision in July 2022.
It should be noted that Spectrum is owned by Charter Communications, one of the largest cable companies in the United States. The lawsuit alleged that the company failed to conduct a criminal background check on the suspect, an employee of the company.
The incident occurred when the suspect was sent to the victim's house to help her fix her fax machine. The suspect reportedly tried to steal from the victim before stabbing her several times with a tool he obtained from the company's toolbox.
This was a form of negligence on the part of Charter Communications. The plaintiff's attorneys alleged that the victim would have been alive had the company conducted a criminal background check on the suspect. In addition, the plaintiff claimed that the suspect had lied about his employment record, something that could have shown up in the background check. For this reason, it would have been highly unlikely for the suspect to secure employment with Spectrum in the first place.
But this is not the only case of negligence involving cable companies.
Another cable giant, Comcast, was found to be negligent in a slip and fall case involving Anthony Dever, the plaintiff. According to the lawsuit, the cable company left unburied wires outside the plaintiff's front yard, creating a trip hazard.
The plaintiff had notified their landlord about the dangerous wires, but the latter did nothing about it. The lawsuit alleged that the plaintiff then slipped and fell while walking to the front door of the house, suffering multiple injuries.
As a result, the plaintiff required several spinal surgeries to fix a compressed cervical spinal cord, including disc protrusions at T4-5 and a lumbar laminectomy/fusion.