AT&T Owes $9.3 Million in Bellwether Case Over Regional Buyouts

An AT&T Inc. affiliate owes $9.3 million, plus interest, to the minority partners it “froze out” of an Oregon-based wireless network business in 2010, a Delaware judge said Wednesday in a bellwether decision setting the tone for more than a dozen related cases.

Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster issued a post-trial ruling for Delaware’s Chancery Court in favor of former investors in Salem Cellular Telephone Co., one of 13 regional operators AT&T took full ownership of at roughly the same time in a bid to capture the full upside of the “data revolution.”

Rather than employing protections like a “majority ...