Opinion ID: 839160
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the record evidence supporting the psc's decision

Text: In light of the fact that the PSC applied the statute correctly, the question becomes whether its factual findings are supported by competent, material and substantial evidence on the whole record. [22] If supported by such evidence, they are entitled to deference, as the majority concedes. [23] The first Court of Appeals panel disagreed with the PSC's factual findings. It believed that the service fee was based on a simple diagnostic error. [24] The panel was unclear what evidence supported the PSC's conclusion that the charging of a service fee by SBC presented a systemic problem. [25] By contrast, the second Court of Appeals panel found substantial evidence supporting the PSC's conclusion. [26] Indeed, substantial evidence on the whole record does support the conclusion that SBC based its charge of the service fee on an assumption. It assumed that, if its employee detected a dial tone at the network interface, the customer's problem was located inside the house. This assumption was in conscious disregard of the fact, well known by SBC, that there was a frequent problem of an intermittent signal transmitted by SBC's own facilities. The complaining customer, William Rovas, [27] an engineer, presented the following evidence: He thoroughly checked his telephone line at the interface of his phone line and the SBC network line. He found that the line went dead after 8 to 15 minutes and diagnosed the problem as an intermittent dial tone. Rovas attempted to apprise SBC of his diagnosis during his initial service telephone call, but the SBC voice-mail system reduced his message to a cryptic no dial tone. [28] Certain that the problem was in SBC's network, the technically sophisticated Rovas unplugged the telephone equipment inside his home to give the SBC technician a clear outside line. The SBC technician who made the first service visit left a tag on the door of the Rovases' home. On the tag, he had marked a box that corresponded to the following preprinted text: The outside lines were checked. The problem shows to the inside premises. A charge of $71 applies to today's visit. Rovas was understandably baffled. First, his own testing had shown that the SBC network was sending an intermittent signal. Second, the tag did not indicate how the technician could have concluded that the problem was inside without entering the premises. Third, the tag did not identify what problem inside the premises the technician had actually diagnosed and whether that problem was the same one of which Rovas had complained. [29] Rovas additionally complained that, although SBC eventually correctly diagnosed the problem as an intermittent dial tone and fixed its own network, the service fee still appeared on the monthly telephone bill. Rovas's evidence established that SBC charged the fee without ascertaining that the problem was inside the home, then billed Rovas for it, knowing that the problem was outside the home. SBC offered several witnesses. Notably not among them was the technician who had left the tag and charged the service fee. The PSC staff placed a continuing objection to the speculative testimony of Tom Dunning, the dispatch control manager. He testified that the technician must have followed SBC's procedures. He must have used an intelligent field device (IFD), Dunning stated, capable of checking both the inside and outside wiring at the network interface outside the Rovases' home. Dunning testified: If the technician went and tested at the network interface, found the ... network was providing dial tone to the network interface, he would assume that the trouble, because he did have good dial tone, could have been in the customer's home. He would look in with his IFD. He would test it both ways. If there was a shorted out [sic], he would have obviously known that, but by looking inside, and he did not see any equipment on the inside, so he would bill the customer. Dunning also testified that an intermittent dial tone was something the technicians dealt with on a daily basis. However, he did not identify any procedures that SBC followed to distinguish this common problem from a problem inside a home. Rather, according to his testimony, technicians were reprimanded only if they took no corrective action when they found no dial tone at the network interface. The hearing referee and the first Court of Appeals panel agreed with SBC that the problem of an intermittent dial tone is difficult to diagnose or fix. They reasoned that the technician incorrectly diagnosed the problem because the telephone equipment inside the home had been unplugged. This view of the evidence is both incorrect and one-sided. First, the hearing referee and the Court of Appeals gave the SBC technician the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he tested the inside wires even though the service tag did not indicate it. Nor did the tag identify the problem that the technician diagnosed inside the home. I find it inappropriate to give SBC the benefit of the doubt under the circumstances. Because SBC asserted that the technician made an innocent mistake, it had the burden to prove that assertion. It also controlled its own witnesses. Yet, the technician was not called to testify about the basis for his diagnosis. Instead, SBC relied on Dunning's speculation that the disconnected equipment inside the home led to the service-fee charge. Additionally, Dunning did not explain what justified the technician's assumption that the problem of which the customer had complained stemmed from the disconnected equipment inside the home. The lack of equipment inside may signal a number of things, including, in this case, that the customer intentionally disconnected his phone. Unlike a shorted wire, disconnected equipment does not necessarily qualify as a problem with inside wiring. The assumption that disconnected equipment is a malfunction inside the home may lead to repeated charges of a service fee although the malfunction is in the outside network. Such charges are all the more inappropriate when, as in this case, the customer has attempted to help SBC isolate the problem. Lastly, both the hearing referee and the first Court of Appeals panel assumed that it was difficult to diagnose the Rovases' problem as an intermittent dial tone. SBC's witnesses testified that it was difficult to diagnose what causes an intermittent dial tone. Dunning explained that it may be caused by a weatherworn conductor somewhere on the outside line. Indeed, SBC never identified the precise cause of the problem in this case and ultimately connected the Rovases to a new telephone line. But because the cause of an intermittent dial tone is difficult to identify does not mean that it is difficult to identify the problem as an intermittent signal from SBC's network. In fact, when Rovas first called SBC, he had already concluded that the SBC network was sending an intermittent signal to his home. He attempted to relate his conclusion to SBC. Rovas's frustration with SBC was in large part due to the company's apparent incompetence in light of his correct original diagnosis. No witness testified that SBC's technicians were trained to check whether a customer's problem was due to an intermittent signal in SBC's network. On the contrary, SBC's procedures allowed technicians to assume that an outside line was functional as long as it sent a signal at the moment of testing. SBC's procedures were clearly inadequate, considering that an intermittent dial tone is an everyday concern that requires more than a momentary testing of the outside line. On the entire record before it, the agency was justified in its conclusion that SBC failed to establish that this was a case of a simple misdiagnosis. SBC's own procedures made it clear that its technicians were permitted to assume without further testing that an outside line was functional if it sent a signal when tested once. The technicians did not attempt to determine whether the customer's telephone equipment had been disconnected. The technicians charged a service fee after insufficient testing. The tag did not identify the problem that justified the fee, nor did it match the technician's diagnosis with the problem of which the consumer complained. If an intermittent dial tone occurs daily and SBC does not require its technicians to adequately test for it before charging a service fee, SBC recklessly ignores a known problem. Additionally, SBC neglects to take the improper service fee off the customer's telephone bill even after it knows that the complained-of problem is in its own network. The fee is refunded only if the customer complains. As the PSC concluded, these company practices can lead to repeated violations of the MTA. SBC charges a service fee on the pretext that a complained-of problem is inside the customer's home. In that way, it imposes part of the cost of repair on the customer in cases of an intermittent dial tone caused by problems in the outside lines. SBC does so in violation of its duty to repair its own network without direct charge to its customers. The PSC's decision is supported by competent, material, and substantial evidence on the whole record. Despite the first panel's faulty reasoning, both it and the second Court of Appeals panel correctly affirmed the decision.