Expert witness in a case involving the bankruptcy of a dark fibre provider

Analysys Mason was the expert witness in a case involving the bankruptcy of a company that offered dark fibre services using electric utility rights of way (the 'bankrupt debtor'). 

Our client had provided vendor financing to the bankrupt debtor. The client’s position was that one major US electric utility took anticompetitive actions to destroy the business of the bankrupt debtor, and the debtor defaulted on its obligations to our client. The electric utility then started up its own subsidiary to do what the bankrupt debtor had been doing, and sold that business several years later for a substantial sum to a national operator of such access networks.

Our role was to compare the activities and actions of the defendant electric company with what other electric companies had done regarding similarly situated startups. 

Among several major lines of argument, we established that this defendant electric utility was the only one in the USA that had been sanctioned by its state regulatory commission for its actions regarding the bankrupt debtor. 

Detailed work was done on the comparability of the bankrupt debtor to other companies similarly situated in the US, noting that similarly situated ones had survived in some form, whereas the bankrupt debtor who owed our client had to be liquidated. 

Our work materially assisted the lawyers for our client in negotiating a favorable settlement.