Following on the heels of a favorable U.S. District Court for Vermont ruling on Sept. 23 that reaffirmed the right of Maine-based Great Works Internet (GWI) to continue managing the operations of the ECFiber broadband network under contract through the end of the year, GWI has fired yet another legal salvo against a newly formed not-for-profit internet service provider (ISP) that is seeking to take over operations of the fiber internet network effective Jan. 1.
ECFiber provides high-speed internet service to approximately 10,000 customers in central and southeastern Vermont, including in the communities of Barnard, Hartford, Pomfret, Reading, West Windsor, and Woodstock. The new, not-for-profit Vermont ISP Operating Company (VISPO) had sought an emergency order that would have allowed the new ISP to take over management of the East Central Vermont Telecommunications District (commonly known as ECFiber) effective immediately, abrogating the three-year contractual management agreement with GWI that was set to expire on Dec. 31.
ECFiber chair F.X. Flinn asserted at a Sept. 8 hearing on the emergency filing that GWI had failed to alert the Vermont ISP that the company had terminated employees in early August; stated its intention to cease operations; and announced that it intended to file for bankruptcy. Counsel for ECFiber argued before district court judge Mary Kay Lanthier that GWI had failed to notify it of these “changes or difficulties,” alleging that this violated the operating agreement between the two entities.
Lanthier did not concur. Instead, as she wrote in her Sept. 23 ruling on the matter, “the parties remain bound to the terms of their Operating Agreement. If the District felt that GWI violated this term of the Operating Agreement, it could have provided notice to GWI that it was terminating the contract if the violation was not corrected within 90 days. The District did not do this,” the judge noted. “Instead, it filed this motion seeking the opportunity to immediately step in and take over operation of the network. The court did not order this at the time of the Preliminary Injunction [in this case] and does not find it appropriate to do so now,” denying ECFiber’s emergency takeover attempt.
Now, GWI has filed a new request for both temporary and permanent injunctive relief from the court, this time seeking a jury trial instead of a hearing before an individual judge.
GWI now seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction, as granted via the requested jury trial, to restrain two former GWI employees who’ve been retained by VISPO from working for the new non-profit ISP for a period of one year. It also calls for a ruling that would restrain and enjoin “ECFiber and VISPO from any further actions to recruit, solicit, encourage, or entice GWI employees to work for VISPO in violation of their employment agreements.”
Last Friday, Sept. 26, attorneys Evan Barquist and Andrew Montroll of Burlington, representing VISPO; Ryan Long and William Strehlow, on behalf of the ECFiber; and two new VISPO employees who previously worked for GWI — Corey Klinck and Andrew Oberholzer, represented by another Burlington counsel, Kevin Lumpkin — all filed legal papers in opposing GWI’s assertions that the present hirings and any recruitment efforts underway by ECFiber are in violation of the GWI employment agreements in question.
The date for a jury trial will be set if and when the GWI request for injunctive relief is ruled in order.
For more on this, please see our October 2 edition of the Vermont Standard.
