NEW YORK, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile have resolved lawsuits accusing each other of deceiving consumers through ads that promised big savings from switching cellphone carriers.
A stipulation of dismissal of Verizon’s lawsuit and T-Mobile’s countersuit was filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court.
The dismissal came more than five months after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a preliminary injunction in Verizon’s favor to block T-Mobile’s “Save Over $1,000” campaign.
Verizon, T-Mobile and their respective lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Settlement talks had included a possible framework to resolve similar future advertising-related disputes.
Verizon sued T-Mobile in February. It later added claims that T-Mobile ads misled customers by promising more than $3,700 of savings over five years compared with Verizon and AT&T, and promising to “save up to 20% vs. the other big guys.”
T-Mobile’s countersuit said Verizon’s own campaign featuring bug-eyed images of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin was bogus because that carrier could not promise customers a “better deal.”
As of June 30, Verizon had 147 million subscribers according to its latest quarterly financial report. T-Mobile had slightly fewer subscribers before changing its disclosures of subscriber metrics this year.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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