Judge rules Charter must pay $1.1 billion after murder of cable customer

A Dallas County Court judge ruled yesterday that Charter Communications must pay over $1 billion to the family of an elderly woman who was murdered in her home.

Charter was ordered to pay $7 billion in damages by a jury. The judge lowered the award.

There are four adult children of Betty Thomas who are sharing the damages. The family's damages were lowered from $750 million to $750 million. Charter's total liability is over a billion dollars due to pre-judgment interest.

The jury decided that the damages should be over 20 times higher than what Charter is responsible for. A nine-to-one ratio is often used as a maximum because of a 2003 US Supreme Court ruling.

Roy Holden was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Betty Thomas. Charter was accused of failing to verify his employment history and ignoring red flags about his behavior, which included stealing credit cards and checks from elderly female customers. There are more details on the murder in our previous articles.

Jury: Charter guilty of “gross negligence” and forgery

Charter has paid part of the judgement. "After the jury verdict, and before the entry of this Judgement, Plaintiffs have voluntarily remitted a substantial amount of the exemplary damages," Renteria wrote.

The jury found Charter guilty of grossNegligence in the murder of Thomas.

Charter was found guilty of forgery with the intent to defraud or harm the people. According to the family's attorney, Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and the damages for the murder would have been limited.

Charter was responsible for $337 million of the $375 million in damages. According to the judge's ruling, the people are entitled to $37.5 million as "actual damages against either Roy James Holden or Charter Communications, as well as several other things."

A company spokesman told Ars that Charter would appeal the ruling. Charter told Ars that the crime was not foreseeable and that the pre-employment criminal background check showed no arrests, convictions, or other criminal behavior. There were no customer complaints about his behavior, according to Charter.

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