Month-long TV Station Outage and the Duty of Good Faith

DISH Network sells satellite television packages to viewers nationwide.  In 2014, its contracts with Turner Network Sales and FOX News Networks expired. DISH was not able to negotiate renewals with these stations for approximately one month. DISH Network also did not offer complaining subscribers any form of monetary relief for the interruptions with the result that subscribers that had selected packages including FOX and Turner TV filed a class action suit for breach of contract in spite of being able to access literally hundreds of other channels.

One of the issues on appeal before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals was whether DISH Network violated the duty of good faith and fair dealing by not providing those two particular channels in an uninterrupted manner.  The court found that not to be the case.

The contract provided a Limitation of Liability Clause which, in relation to interruptions and delays, stated that “[n]either we nor our third-party billing agents … will be liable for any interruption in any service or for any delay or failure to perform, including without limitation … DISH Network’s access to all or any portion of services….”

The covenant of good faith will “not contradict terms or conditions for which a party has bargained.”  Thus, said the court, the argument was precluded by the unambiguous terms of the agreement.  “Courts must take care to ensure that we don’t use the covenant as another means for substituting a different deal from the one the parties contemplated.” 

That makes sense.  I can’t help thinking how litigious our society can be in allowing suits such as the above to proceed that far.  Does it really matter that one cannot get a couple of TV stations out of hundreds for a month?  Is it worth burdening the court system such a matter?

On the other hand, DISH could also just have offered some sort of compensation to its customers.  Cable TV is indeed very expensive these days, so the subscribers do have a point here. 

Furthermore, Cable TV providers still refuse to unbundle services to an arguably sufficient extent.  What about those of us who really truly only want to see a few specific stations?  Why should we continually have to pay for a bunch of extra stations that we never watch?  Until such unbundling become reality, arguments such as there being many other stations to choose from are arguably somewhat irrelevant.

The case is Neil Stokes; Craig Felzien v. DISH Network, L.L.C., 2016 WL 5746329.