As CivSource has been reporting Sprint is being sued by two government sponsored non-profits Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen, over a data plan lease that provides low-cost internet access for anchor institutions. Last week, Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen won a temporary injunction stopping Sprint from shutting off service, and yesterday they may have won a second round in the case.
Following the ruling, Sprint went back to court with a somewhat surprising motion attempt which sought to require Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen to tender a $65 million bond in order to cover the cost of remaining on the WIMAX network during the 90-day injunction period. That motion was roundly rejected by Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders. From the ruling:
Leaving aside that Defendants’ motion does not constitute an emergency and should be denied on that basis alone, Defendants have not remotely demonstrated that their requested $65 million bond has any legal or factual basis. Instead, it is apparent that Defendants’ “emergency” request for a $65 million bond is not intended to protect its reasonable financial interests; rather, it is a tactic designed to undermine the injunction entered by the Court and thereby make it impossible for the Plaintiffs to migrate their user base to LTE without a service interruption, which was precisely what the Court’s Order was designed to foster. {…} Rule 65(c), which permits – but does not obligate – the Court to require a bond is not intended to be a device by which an unhappy party can defeat an injunction entered against it merely by conjuring up the greatest amount of purported monetary harm it can possibly imagine.
Sprint also sought to overturn the preliminary injunction and lost.
